


Icarus, Down From Ithaca (ON HIATUS)

by artisturtle



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bree Is A Senior, Bree Is The Cheerios Captain, Brittany and Sam are Twins, F/F, Not Kind to Bree, Russel Fabray Is a Nice Guy, Some Characters are OOCs, Unholy Trinity Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26552629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisturtle/pseuds/artisturtle
Summary: On the first day of senior year, a girl brighter than the sun walks into the quiet halls of William McKinley High School. The hallways hummed with the murmur of her name and an entire revolution amongst its students is lit aflame. Quinn Fabray is in the midst of it all.UPDATED EVERY TWENTIETH DAY OF THE MONTH (UTC+8:00).
Relationships: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce
Comments: 18
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, good people! 
> 
> Damn, I still own nothing and it still feels like a punch to the gut.
> 
> I was watching the movie Stargirl, and it has stuck to me ever since. So, I guess this story is inspired by the wonderful narrative of the movie. I decided, what the hell, I'll write about my very own Stargirl, too. It's a bit of a bonus that the movie has good music, too. It features my favorite band, The Cars. Check it out if you haven't yet.
> 
> So just as a heads-up to everybody, this story is going to be updated ONCE A MONTH -- every twentieth day of the month, to be exact. With work and life in the way, it's a bit hard to catch up with writing. I do plan on finishing this one though. I actually laid out all of the groundwork so it's definitely getting there.
> 
> This story is set in the alternate universe, so a lot of the characters here are either aged up or aged down and some of them are OOCs. I've had fun writing this one, it's actually not as taxing as the others although I still feel like this one could be impactful as well. I seriously hope you enjoy this. 
> 
> This is unbeta-ed, so all mistakes are mine even though I try to write and correct my pieces before posting them here. Also, I don't really speak English as a first language, so I might have mistakes along the way. 
> 
> Read on, my friends!

The rain hasn’t let up since they stepped out of that hotel and Dad started driving that Friday morning. Ten-year old Quinn Fabray lazily watches the large, fat drops of water splatter against the windshield. The big, rusty board glares at her with a **WELCOME TO LIMA, OHIO** written with bold, fat letters **.** She glares at the sign as Dad takes a left, exiting I-75 and turning right onto OH-81 Highway.

It’s almost dark by the time they pull up in front of the rustic, antiquarian house full of ivy clumps on one side of the wall. She barely remembers this house that was bought by her grandparents to live their retirement off of; besides she was barely five the last time they visited family in Ohio and her grandparents had been dead for years.

Lightning streaks momentarily, clothing their entire surroundings with an eerie, purple light. Thunder follows, bellowing in the distance, and Quinn jumps a little. The porch light flickers for a fraction of a second. She and Daddy raced up to the porch with their hands covering their heads so that they won’t get wet.

They never had storms this much back home in Ithaca.

It’s then at that particular moment, that Quinn realizes – she’s already home. Lima, a small town located in the northwestern part of Ohio with some seventeen thousand residents, is now her **home**.

The day she and her Dad left Ithaca, she didn’t really remember much. She remembered saying goodbye to her only friends -- Bjorn and Denny, but nothing much beyond that. The actual day of leaving, there’s so much hurrying up that she did not have the actual time to think about leaving or saying goodbye.

Dad opens the front door with an eerie creaking sound, and it takes him almost ten seconds to find the light switch. When he flicks it on, the foyer is flooded with warm, yellow light. Their new house is warm and cozy, with a large, sprawling front yard and a footpath leading to a deep porch flooded with yellow light.

“We should at least eat some dinner,” Dad declares as he fumbles for his phone, logging on to Google Maps. He tries to find a restaurant that’s able to deliver within thirty minutes. When he finds one, he turns to Quinn. “Is Chinese okay with you?”

Quinn nods, not really certain. She’s not sure if the food tastes different in this part of the country. She watches as Dad gets out of the house to bring back at least one suitcase for each of them so they could have a fresh change of clothes. That night, they eat their dinner out of boxes, and Dad taught her a really neat trick of making plates out of her food box. Quinn decides to herself that the food tastes the same.

That night, as she sleeps in her maroon carousel sweater in a room that barely feels her own, the harsh rain still pattering on the roof and the branches of the large elm that sits in their backyard scratching her window, Quinn finally realizes that she’s now home in Lima, Ohio.

She cries for the first time since she lost Mom, since Dad decided that they should pack up and leave Ithaca. She cries knowing why, but not exactly why.

She’s in a new house, in a new town – no friends, no home, no Mom.

The next day, the movers arrived. They have spent both Saturday and Sunday moving boxes, fixtures, and furniture around the new house. They try to cover as much as they could with the movers and by the time Sunday afternoon rolls in, most of the boxes have been tucked away in the basement, and a majority of the furniture and fixtures are already settled in.

When Quinn’s first Monday of her official summer in Lima rolls in, Dad's aunt named Ellie drops by to look after her while her Dad will be teaching at the OSU Campus in Columbus for the summer semester. Quinn grimaces when she hears the news that she’s going to be left with an adult – she’s already ten, not two for Christ’s sake.

Still, she hugs Ellie tight and she doesn’t make a face at her grand-aunt who had driven for almost an hour and probably dropped everything for them just to stay with her for the summer _because she’s not that cruel_. 

The woman is well into her fifties, with a lanky build and silver-white hair, an open smile, and very keen, green eyes. From what Dad had told her, Ellie is her grandmother’s youngest sister. Her laughter is a gushing waterfall that falls from her thin lips.

“Hi Quinn,” she says in a breathy, gentle voice. “You can call me Aunt Ellie. Don't bother with the "grand" because I am not that old. I’m a botanist and I work with plants. Come, I wanna show you something really cool.”

She takes Quinn’s hand and tugs her towards the kitchen. On the marble countertop, there’s a small carafe filled with yellow-colored water halfway. Three fresh gardenias are propped into the water. Quinn hesitates, but Aunt Ellie pulls her towards the carafe.

“Go on, check it out,” Aunt Ellie coaxes.

Upon further inspection, Quinn realizes that at the center of the flowers, there is a yellow pigment blooming and seeping into the gardenia’s white petals. It looks as if the petals are sucking in yellow color.

“Wow,” she beholds the flowers in awe.

Aunt Ellie grins from where she’s filling a plate full of bacon and eggs. “It’s so cool, isn’t it? The flowers are really pretty. Do you want blueberry pancakes? I made blueberry pancakes.”

Quinn furrows her brow. “How did you do that?”

Aunt Ellie smiles as she sets the plate in front of Quinn. “Eat your breakfast first and I’ll teach you everything you want to know about gardenias and flowers. We have all summer to embark on wonderful adventures.”

Quinn shoves a pancake into her mouth, and it tastes heavenly. It’s then at that moment that Quinn Fabray decides Aunt Ellie is the coolest grand-aunt that ever lived.

One afternoon a few days, Dad comes home with _something_ in the back of his truck – a huge box. He also brought home a bacon burger and strawberry milkshake, Quinn's favorite Happy Meal.

“Your birthday’s coming up this weekend,” Dad says to her, ruffling her hair as they eat in the den, the TV droning on with some documentary Quinn is not paying attention to. “Consider it an early gift, even though you’re going to have to open it on your birthday this weekend,” he sighs.

“It’s just…you’ve been really cool and nice with all this moving and packing up. And Ellie tells me you’ve been a very good girl while you’re with her so…thank you, Quinn. I know it’s been a hard time for you, and you have to let me know what’s going on inside your head,” he finally says.

Quinn thinks he’s going to cry, but he just excuses himself to get a beer from the fridge, sniffling a little as he passes them by. When he comes back to his chair, he’s back to his usual jolly self and he shoves his burger into his mouth.

Aunt Ellie looks up from the paper she’s reading, noting that Russel should ‘eat his food properly’. Quinn doesn’t know why, but Aunt Ellie _still reads_ the newspaper even though people have got TVs and smartphones where they can get their news.

Her grand-aunt bends across her chair in keen interest and there’s a wicked glint flashing through her hazel-green eyes as if she’s just remembered something she had forgotten long ago. “Oh, birthdays! Your eleventh birthday is on Sunday,” she says in an excited voice.

Dad and Quinn both look up to the older woman, each sporting different looks – Quinn wears a genuinely curious glint in her eye while Dad has a wary, worried look as if he knows something terrible is bound to happen.

“Oh Russ, I have a great idea!” Ellie arcs her arms wide, as if in mock theatricality. “Here,” she flips a few pages, then shoves the particular page into Russel’s face. She grins, almost ecstatic.

“A family feature?” Quinn gapes.

“Is that even a good idea?” Russell interjects, shoving a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth.

Ellie gives him a slight nod. “Of course, it will be a good idea...great even! It’ll be easy for Quinn to find friends before school starts. I’m sure someone will read through the paper and reach out to Quinn.”

Quinn snorts. “It’s not like I’m not able to make friends, Dad. Besides, no one reads the paper except for old people who are in their retirement years. No offense, Auntie.”

Ellie shrugs. “It wouldn’t hurt to try,” she says and she kicks Russell on the shin, forcing him to agree to her idea.

Quinn just shrugs, really. People her age make friends via the Internet or via text messages and parties -- and certainly not via features in a shoddy local newspaper. Still, she thinks she could humor her old aunt at the very least.

The very next day, at exactly ten in the morning, Ellie phones the newspaper company, informing them that her grand-niece is having her birthday on Sunday, and she wants a spot at the regular family feature.

Quinn loathes to admit it, but she’s sitting on the front porch on the morning of the first day of July, waiting for the paper to arrive. When it does, she gingerly opens to the family feature, wanting to read what her mother has to say about her. It’s written in italics, and she squints against the morning light to read it.

_“...Quinn Fabray just moved with her family from Ithaca, New York to Lima, Ohio three weeks ago. Quinn is turning eleven today. Quinn loves dancing and music. As a hobby, Quinn loves to collect vintage photos and take pictures of her own. She also loves to read books of any kind, but her favorite is poetry. Quinn’s favorite flowers are Sunflowers and Gardenias, and she loves the color Yellow…”_

There’s lettering in bold saying: **HAPPY BIRTHDAY QUINN FABRAY!** below the information about her and it makes her ears burn. She quietly folds the newspaper and she climbs up back to her room to pretend she’s still asleep.

The gift Dad gives her is a bike. Now, she’s free to go and hang out at the bike-and-skate park in Lima’s community center for as long as she’s home by dinnertime. Inadvertently, it’s where she meets her first friends in Lima -- Santana Lopez and Brittany Pierce.

Just like her, Santana had moved from Orlando, Florida to Lima not a couple of weeks ago, while Brittany had lived all her life in Lima. While Santana and Brittany have shared a bond long before Quinn had arrived in town, both girls have accepted Quinn without qualms.

Some days after her birthday, as she’s towing her bike into the garage, she notices a paper bag sitting on the porch. Inside the paper bag sits a frame of pressed flower petals - sunflowers and gardenias to be exact. There are three sunflowers and six gardenias preserved in resin and framed with a gilded, golden frame. Tied with yellow twine to the frame, there is a folded piece of craft paper written with scribbles. It’s too dark out to read the scribbling, so she carries the frame into her room to read it.

_**HAPPY BIRTHDAY, QUINN FABRAY** _

_Let me sing you a Happy Birthday to the stars_  
_Perhaps to Orion, or Fomalhaut not so very far_  
_Whisper, spill it to the Milky Way,_  
_We’ll be friends, and friends we are one day_  
_Perhaps now, I must remain to you unknown_  
_But rest assured, I’ll be here when the day’s done_  
_As you drift your thoughts counting sheep_  
_I’ll be with the stars watching you asleep_

There’s no name to indicate who the gift-giver is, so Quinn naturally asks the adults in their household about it. “Dad, these things don’t happen,” she tells him. Quinn sourly looks at her father.

Russell looks up from his steak. “This is Lima, we don’t know for sure. Maybe someone took the feature seriously and gave you a gift?” he says as he stabs the meat on his plate. “Maybe you’ve found yourself an admirer.”

She kicks Dad under the table, and Dad just laughs.

The next day at the bike park, Quinn asks her friends. When she asks Brittany, the girl just smiles brightly at her before ruffling her blonde hair as if she’s some sort of pet. “It’s okay, Quinn. Lord Tubbington leaves cigars on my bed thinking I’d like it as a gift. He thinks he’s so sneaky and I don’t know it’s him, but I do know.”

Quinn asks Santana up about it. The Latina just shrugs at her. “Hell if I know, Q. Maybe it’s an admirer? Say…I don’t know, Bobby Nelson or his little brother down there?” Santana points her thumbs to Bobby Nelson, who’s picking booger out of his nose.

She glumly punches Santana in the shoulder, shooting down the idea before Santana can start getting ideas of blabbing it to others. She also trips her on the rink for good measure, making Santana fall on her butt.

At that time, she just chalked it off as some mystery, some sort of glitch in the system that’ll never happen again. It never happened again. On Quinn’s twelfth birthday, there’s a knitted yellow beanie with sunflower patterns wrapped inside a paper bag. There’s the same yellow tag, scribbled with a **HAPPY BIRTHDAY QUINN!** written on it. It’s still written in messy handwriting.

When she turns thirteen, there’s a watercolor painting of a sunflower field with the sunset at the background and a typewriter, reading a note that says: **_all the beautiful words in the world for you, Sunflower._ **

When she turns fourteen, she receives a knitted dark-green sweater embroidered with yellow sunflowers. When she turns fifteen, she gets fifteen vintage photographs of sunflowers and gardenias. When she turns sixteen, she’s gifted with a cassette player and a mixtape of sixteen songs -- all talking about sunshine and sunflowers.

When she turns seventeen, there’s a small box left for her on the front porch, containing a gold-chain necklace with a sunflower pendant. There’s a typewritten card on fancy paper with it, signed with its usual **HAPPY BIRTHDAY QUINN!** in bold, gold letters.

Each time she receives a gift, she always asks her Dad, Aunt Ellie, and even her friends, but none of them tells her who the mysterious gift-giver is. Aunt Ellie tells her it’s maybe one of her friends, and just wanted to surprise her. Dad tells her that it’s maybe one of her relatives from her mother’s side back from New York.

Santana is convinced that the gifts come from Biff Macintosh, the guy who’s been pining after Quinn since they were fourteen, who’s sending her all the stuff. Quinn argues that Biff is too daft to even think about what she wants in the first place and there is no way Biff could ever orchestrate such gifts that pay attention to even the tiniest details, but Santana’s opinion is hard to sway. Brittany is still convinced that it’s Lord Tubbington sending the gifts to Quinn.

Either way, her entire birthday is shrouded in mystery each year. There’s no phone call, or no follow-up gifts or any traces that may pinpoint anyone about it, and it only happens on her birthdays. Not on Christmas or on Thanksgiving, but on the first day of July and only on the first day of July – her birthday.

She has come to the notion that maybe she’ll never know about it at all.

It doesn’t occur to her that maybe someone else is watching her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It is the twentieth again, I hope you had been holding out for this one. I hope the month had been well, and if it wasn't, at least it's been bearable. Here goes Chapter 2. Enjoy!

**“Have you seen her?”**

It’s the first thing Santana says to Quinn on the first day of school. The Latina leans on the bike racks, hands shoved in her pockets. Looking around, Quinn notes the absence of their other friends.

“Britt’s not here yet?” she muses and Santana nods. It’s rarely an occurrence that Brittany doesn’t arrive with Santana at school.

“Ignition’s busted. Car battery broke,” she says. “Sam had to tow her car to Hummel’s earlier this morning. For some reason, she had forgotten to turn off her lights last night. She’s hitching a ride with Sam.”

Quinn lets out a grunt as she hoists herself up on the rack, waiting for her other two blonde friends to arrive. She punches Santana on the shoulder slightly, in hopes to get her attention. “Seriously San, see who?”

Santana cackles before craning her neck, no doubt looking for the person they had initially wanted to talk about. She had witnessed something remarkable, and it showed in her face. “You’ll know soon enough,” she grins, her eyes still scanning the crowds milling in the parking lot.

There are hundreds of kids about, screeching and calling names, pointing to summer-tanned faces. Quinn shoves her hands into her hoodie pockets. The school buzz in William McKinley High is always heightened on the first fifteen minutes before the first bell of the first day.

It sort of fills her with an odd sadness. This year is her senior year, and this yearly tradition of people-watching around McKinley High is coming to an end. Next year, she’s probably going to be in Athens or in New Haven, Santana and Brittany will definitely be in New York together and Sam – well, Sam’s just going to be following where his twin sister will be. Puck’s probably going to end up in jail or in Los Angeles – or maybe in Los Angeles and then in jail.

Sam’s red pickup pulls up on the spot closest to the bike racks. Brittany jumps out of the passenger seat, slamming the door (much to her twin brother’s annoyance). Noah Puckerman arrives not long after, parking his dark-gray motorcycle with a spray of pebbles. He gives them a large, goofy grin as he winks at Quinn.

“Sorry guys, the line at McDonald’s took so long,” Puck mutters as he takes hash browns and burgers out of the greasy paper bag. They eat the food in the back of Sam’s truck, as per tradition.

“You know I liked doing this with you guys, but this year it’s just sad,” Sam mutters. “I mean…this is the last first day of school we’re doing together,” he says as he swings on the roof of Santana’s car. “I wonder if we’d still be friends once we’d graduate. I mean, we’re probably going to have lives of our own or something.”

Santana rolls her eyes at Sam and she slaps his leg. “Stop saying things like that, or I’ll whoop your dumb ass for the whole school to see. None of us are going to leave each other behind, you and everyone else around here know that.”

Quinn laughs. “Yeah Sam, stop being a moron.”

The blonde boy looks at her wetly, like he’s about to cry, but then he throws a bit of his burger into Santana’s face and Santana tells him to fuck off. Sam just laughs at her, before someone else throws food and they start a mini-food fight.

They barely got into their last shove of food when the bell rings and the students start to pour into the doors of McKinley. They had to collect their trash in a rush and stick it into the nearest dumpsters so that they won’t be late. They hurriedly separate their ways to their respective classes, since they don’t have the same subject schedules. They all separated with a promise that whoever gets to arrive for lunch at the courtyard should save the others a spot under the willow tree.

Quinn hears it again in her homeroom. She hears it in English and Geometry. She hears all about the buzz of the “new kid” during Miss Holiday’s History class. She hears it in the hallways.

“Have you seen her?”

It piques her interest, terribly so. While she’s sitting in Miss Holiday’s History class, she keeps on thinking who the new kid in school could be. Could it be a hot blonde with a California tan who surfs and skates? Could it be one of those summer miracles, someone who left school in June looking like a little girl and then coming back in September as a full-bodied woman? Could it be someone exotic, with an accent they could never imitate?

Then, she hears a name fall from Mike Chang’s lips while in Mrs. Bunner’s AP Biology class: “Berry.”

She turns to Mike Chang, who’s slouching behind her. Her brows furrow. “Berry? What kind of name is that?”

“Berry,” Mike repeats. “Rachel Berry. She’s in my homeroom. Have you seen her?”

“No.”

By the time she steps out into the school courtyard, it’s already packed. She blessedly thanks Puckerman and Sam in silence because the two are already in their spot under the willow tree, talking about video games while waiting for the girls to arrive. She sets her lunch tray down and scans the crowd for a familiar duo.

It’s then that she sees  _ her. _

She’s wearing a black quarter-sweater and a mustard beret even though it’s still warm, and it makes her look like a cross between an oversized toddler and an underage adult, but she does pull the look off. Her hair, thick and wavy, is the color of mahogany and mulled wine, warm-brown, and the tiniest gloss of red copper against the noonday sun. It falls several inches below her shoulders. Her plaid, checkered skirt swishes daintily in the wind, revealing her legs clad in Oxford shoes. It’s not necessarily a bad look, it’s just something that Quinn, as is most everyone in the entire school, is not used to seeing.

Quinn notices that she’s terribly short, but what she lacks in height, she makes up in presence. She walks past the crowds of milling students, smiling at them as if she had known them all her life. Sometimes, the openness takes the others aback and they take a step back, before awkwardly smiling back at her.

She did not carry a lunch tray. In fact, she carries a large canvas rucksack with a larger-than-life sunflower painted on it. The lunchroom is dead silent the moment they noticed her making her way through the crowd. She stops at an empty table at the farthest end of the courtyard and sits down. She pulls a sandwich and a Tupperware of fruits from her bag and starts to eat.

Half of the lunchroom keeps staring, the other half starts whispering.

Santana and Brittany arrive at their table not long after. Santana sets the tray with a loud clatter, making everyone in the table yelp in surprise. Santana waggles her eyebrows at Quinn.

“What did I tell you?” Santana whispers at all of them. “She’s in senior year, too. I heard she’s been homeschooled ever since. Until now, I suppose.”

“We share AP Calculus together,” Brittany says. “Rachel’s pretty cool.”

“Maybe she’ll share some of our classes then. The day’s not over yet, what do you say, Quinn?” Sam smiles. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’d definitely tap that,” he says, earning a high-five from Puck.

“Me too, mate…” Puck seconds.

The blonde girls give out an exasperated groan. Santana elbows Puck on the side and Brittany steps on her brother’s foot, and the boys both groan in anguish. Quinn doesn’t really feel bad for them, at the very least.

She turns to Santana. “Maybe that explains why we never saw her before,” she says, her eyes gravitating towards the brunette sitting with her back turned towards them.

No one is sitting with her, but the tables next to hers are cramped, almost two to a seat. Rachel didn’t seem to notice. She seems to be comfortably marooned in her lunch table island, surrounded by a sea of staring, buzzing faces.

Suddenly, Santana is giving her a shit-eating grin that she knows to only appear when the Latina is either thinking of something really great or something really shitty. Quinn had to backpedal a bit because Santana is grinning so wide, it’s borderline creepy and she knows it’s either a terrible or a great idea that’s coming out of her mouth.

“You know what I’m thinking?” Santana says, her voice cryptic even though Quinn already knows what the other is thinking.

Quinn grins back and she nods. “Fondue for Two.”

Fondue for Two is Brittany’s monthly online talk show. Once done out of boredom during the summer between freshman and sophomore year, the school has now teamed up with them since junior year in hopes to bring some buzz in McKinley High. Quinn acts as director, Santana functions as the producer-slash-technical director and Brittany is the on-camera host while Puck and Sam are the cameramen. Each month, they interview key persons in William McKinley High: teachers, athletes, honor students, cheerleaders, prom or homecoming queens and kings, and model citizens in Lima, Ohio. Most of them are noteworthy in the usual ways, but not especially interesting.

Suddenly Santana’s eyes boggled, Puckerman drops the hotdog he’s devouring, and Rachel Berry is standing from her seat. She’s taking something from her canvas bag, and they realize it’s a ukulele. Now, Rachel Berry is singing in a voice so heavenly!

Quinn’s heart picks up. It’s getting better and better. 

Rachel is strumming away, bobbing her head and shoulders, singing as if there’s no one in the courtyard but her. There’s stone silence all around. Then, she starts to sing Take On Me.

The silence is deafening by the time Rachel Berry is done singing. Even the wind across the courtyard seems hushed and quiet, it’s as though the entire school had come to a standstill. However, Rachel Berry doesn’t mind. She puts the ukulele on the table.

Then, the sound of a single person clapping reverberates across the silent courtyard. It’s one of the freshman kids Quinn doesn’t recognize. Then, Rachel is picking up her ukulele again, strumming and strutting and twirling. Heads bobbed and palms start to clap to the tempo. Mouths hang open, eyes follow her – all filled with disbelief.

When she passes their table, Quinn gets a good look at Rachel. She’s not gorgeous, but she’s not ugly. Her nose is a bit on the bigger and beaky side, but it serves her well and it makes her beautiful. She’s not pretty. She doesn’t have freckles. Mostly, she looks like the other girls in school, but there are two stark differences between them and Rachel Berry. One, she doesn’t wear makeup, and two, her eyes are the warmest coffee-brown Quinn had ever seen. Rachel twirls as she goes past them, her skirt brushing Quinn’s knees, making Quinn jolt in surprise.

And then, Rachel Berry marches out of the lunchroom.

Puck and Sam are still open-mouthed. Santana is literally rocking on her seat with excitement. Brittany and Quinn gawk at each other. Then, Brittany slams her hand on the table.

“Fondue for Two!” she yells.

The next day, Bree Westbrook, captain of McKinley High’s captain of the Cheerios, a six-time cheerleading team champion, is holding court at the school’s football field. Her co-captain, Jordan Stern slinks beside her. The rest of McKinley’s cheerleading team and wrestling team sits behind them.

“She’s a fake,” Bree sneers, flipping her dark, wavy locks over her shoulders. Jordan bobs her blonde head, wholly agreeing to the cheer captain’s claim. “She’s an actress, a scam. Didn’t she say they once lived on Broadway? Broadway is full of actresses and scammers and fake people.”

“Who’s scamming us?” someone from the back calls out. It’s Tina Cohen-Chang’s small, timid voice.

“Duh? Who else if not the school administration? Don’t you all get it?” Bree glowers at everyone derisively, as if she is surrounded by idiots.

Blaine Anderson’s hand shoots up in the air. “Why?”

The cheer captain looks at Blaine as if he’s the stupidest person to ever walk the earth. “Are you stupid? Of course, they’re doing it for school spirit,” she spits out. “McKinley was so boring last year. Only the Cheerios brought a Nationals win, and nothing else. It’s getting tiresome having to carry all that weight, don’t you think? The school sees this and they think that if they plant some nutcase in with the students—”

“Wait, what? Rachel’s a plant?” someone from the crowd cuts Bree off and the cheerleader glares, then she continues.

“—who tries to stir things up and make it “more interesting” then maybe all the loser students will show up at games or join a club or something. Or maybe if she shows up and shakes things up a little bit, maybe the loser teams will have something to strive harder for,” Bree ends her little speech, pointedly looking at Finn Hudson, the captain of the football team, who just glares at her.

It’s no secret that the football team has never had a win in ten years.

The bell rings and the crowd immediately disperses. All the students walk into McKinley High, whispering about Rachel Berry and her ukulele. By the time the first period begins, Bree’s theory about Rachel is starting to circulate among the student body.

“So you think Westbrook’s right?” Santana asks her while they’re at study hall together, assignment forgotten and haphazardly thrown over the side. “What she said about Rachel in the courtyard earlier, I mean. That Rachel’s a fake?”

Quinn rolls her eyes, trying to focus on her assignments. “God, listen to yourself. This is Lima, San. Nothing ever happens here,” she reminds her. “Not even a nutcase planted by the school into their student body to shake things up.”

“Huh,” Santana shrugs nonchalantly. “Maybe not. But you can’t be too sure. I am pretty sure though, I am hoping Bree is right.”

The blonde girl furrows her brow. “Why would you want that? That is…so wrong on many levels,” Quinn closes her book. “Besides, if she’s not a real student in McKinley or was a real student in McKinley, we can’t put her in Fondue for Two.”

Santana’s face splits into that oh-so-annoying grin again. “Oh, you don’t get it, Quinn. Can’t you see it?” the Latina spreads her arms as if she’s picturing a marquee. “Fondue for Two Uncovers Truth Behind School Hoax.”

Quinn gapes openly at Santana. “You want her to be fake, don’t you?” it doesn’t come out as a question, but more like a statement.

Santana’s grin grows impossibly wider. “Of course. Our viewer ratings for the episode will bust through the effin’ roof!”

Quinn has to admit though, that the more she sees of Rachel, the more she finds it easier to believe that Rachel is a scam, a plant, a joke – anything but real. On her second day in school, the girl is wearing baggy denim short overalls, a yellow blouse, and her yellow beret. Her mahogany-brown hair is pulled into twin pigtails. Rachel looks a lot like a lost Little Bo Peep.

At lunch, she’s alone at her table again. Like yesterday, she strums her instrument even before most of them had finished eating. This time, she doesn’t play a song. Instead, she gets up and starts to walk among the tables. She stares at everyone, from one face to another and then another and then another. She appears to be looking for someone and the whole lunchroom had become rather uncomfortable.

As she approaches their table, Quinn’s heart races because  **_what if Rachel is looking for her?_ **

Honestly, the thought terrifies Quinn. So she turns away from Rachel and stares at Sam, who is conveniently sitting opposite of her at the lunch table. She could feel Rachel Berry standing behind her and she watches Sam’s large mouth curve up into a wide, goofy smile. He gives Rachel an awkward wave, and Quinn is painfully aware of Rachel’s presence behind her. 

Her skirt twirls with her as she makes her way to Wesley Murdoch, who’s sitting two tables away, a sophomore with bright ginger hair and wide green eyes. Her face splits into a grin. “Hi, Wesley. Happy birthday,” she says. Then, she strums her ukulele.

His wide green eyes grow impossibly larger when Rachel Berry starts to sing him the Happy Birthday song. When she comes to his name, she didn’t just sing his first name, but she sings with his full name.

“Happy Birthday, dear Wesley Murdooooooch! Happy Birthday to you!”

Wesley’s freckle-clad face turns red as a tomato as a flurry of claps fills the entire courtyard. There are whistles and hoots, but they seem to be more for Wesley Murdoch than for her. As Rachel Berry marches out of the courtyard, Bree rises from her seat, whispers to a few other cheerleaders, pointing at Rachel Berry and saying something none of them could hear.

“Seriously Quinn, I’m telling you,” Santana says as they all stand while the bell rings. “That bitch better be fake.”

Quinn turns to Santana. “What do you mean, San?”

It’s Brittany that answers for her. “What Santana says here is if she’s real, she’s in big trouble. How long do you think somebody who is  _ really _ like that is going to last around here?”

It’s a valid point.

William McKinley High is not exactly a melting pot for non-conformity. There are variants of people here and there, but within narrow limits and people often stay among prescribed stereotypes. Jocks and cheerleaders rule the school; if you’re a jock or a cheerleader, chances are you’re a douche to the losers. The nerds and the losers often stay low, and some people are average – people like Quinn and her friends who are probably going to get out of Lima after they graduate and not look back, but people who also wouldn’t excel or be something special.

Brittany is right. It’s unthinkable that Rachel Berry could survive a year in McKinley – or at least survive unchanged – among all of them. It’s also clear that Bree Westbrook and her friends are almost half-right: Rachel Berry is may or may not be a faculty plant for school spirit, but whatever she is, for what she’s worth – she’s not entirely real.

There’s no way she could be real.

Throughout the earlier half of September, Rachel shows up in various dresses – all different and equally outrageous: a 1920s dress, buckskins, kimonos, denim miniskirts (much to the boys’ delight), pioneer dresses, and cowboy hats. One day she shows up in a black trench coat, then on the next, she looks like a homeless French girl from Les Miserables. Normal clothing for her is her argyle prints, the plaid schoolgirl skirt, and a beret.

Every few days she serenades someone during lunch. Most of the time, it’s a Happy Birthday song. Sometimes, she breaks out into a song in the study hall or the hallways. She sings Happy Birthday to anyone who has a birthday, and Quinn is suddenly glad that her birthday is in the summer.

In the hallways, she says hello to cheerleaders, jocks, and losers alike. She even says hello to Sue Sylvester when all of the kids were scampering away from the woman, and Miss Sylvester just gawked because she was surprised to see such a peppy five-foot-high kid who had been so bold to walk up to her. The seniors couldn’t believe it and everyone could not believe it. 

They’ve never seen a student so bold.

One day, while they’re at lunch, Kitty Wilde screams when two beady eyes peeked from Rachel’s rucksack pocket. Not a few seconds later, a ferret jumped out of her bag and ate kitten food at Rachel’s table. 

One afternoon, it has been raining and Quinn has been hurrying up to her last period when she chances to see the familiar mahogany-haired girl in the football field…dancing and singing – in the rain, no less.

Everyone in school wants to define her, wrap her up into one of those stereotypes as they all did with each other, but all of them could never seem to get past “weird” and “eccentric” and “strange”. In a way, Rachel reminds Quinn of her Aunt Ellie, perhaps only more eccentric and just younger. Her ways knocked the entire school’s social balance and set them off-kilter, and all of them are gawking as if her existence hovered in the cloud-covered sky above the school.

Everything she does seems to echo Bree Westbrook’s claim:  **Rachel is fake, she’s not real…she’s not real…**

At night, Quinn stays up later after the lights are out, moonlight spilling into her window, purring like a lazy cat upon her sheets. Ever since they moved to Lima some seven years ago, she had learned to love the moon and the stars as well, though their light is nothing like the sunshine. In fact, it feels like it’s not the opposite of sunshine, but the underside of the day – its private side.

It is during one of those moonlight times that Quinn realizes Bree Westbrook is wrong, and Santana is in for a very disappointing revelation: Rachel Berry  _ is _ real.


	3. Chapter 3

Santana is not giving it a rest.

As the Fondue’s producer, Santana’s main job is to recruit people for the show, albeit with the approval of the entire team. If one of them says no, the entire sign-up is a bust. Usually, Quinn runs the entire show, so she gets the final say. Once Santana signs someone up, Quinn and Brittany both research the person and prepare the question Brittany will ask during the interview.

Every day since they first laid eyes on Rachel, Santana asks her the  _ question. _

“Will you let me sign her up?”

Every day, Quinn answers no.

Like any other day, Santana asks her at lunch. The girl is already getting frustrated by the fifth time she had asked Quinn about signing Rachel Berry up for Fondue for Two. She throws a potato chip at Quinn.

“I’m not sure, San.” 

“What do you mean you’re not sure, Quinn? Let me sign Rachel up,” Santana says. “Britt definitely wants her on the show, I’m pretty sure Sam would agree to everything his sister would say and Puck here doesn’t give two farts and a lawn chair about it.”

Puck raises his hand. “Actually about that—”

Quinn shrugs just as the same time Puckerman has spoken. “That was then. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“What’s there to be not sure about? I mean, how can you not be sure? We high-fived each other on this table weeks ago,” she snorts, almost derisively. “What’s there to be sure about?”

Quinn shrugs.

“Well then,” Santana says as she stands from her spot on the bench. “I guess I’ll have to sign her up without your say,” she spitefully grits out as she walks away. “You know, there are times you’re really a jerk, Quinn. This is one of those times.”

Truth be told, Quinn feels uncomfortable with the sudden change in the dynamics of her friendship with the Latina. Santana had been her oldest friend in Lima, and having moved from Orlando a few weeks before she did some seven years ago have fostered a very strong bond between them -- friends who are both from outside of Lima uprooted from the places they were born in and placed into a cow-town in the middle of Ohio. 

Brittany became her friend by extension as well as Sam and Puck. With Santana, Quinn has always shared an unspeakable, ineffable bond of friendship. Quinn supports Santana in every endeavor, and when the Latina had come out as a lesbian, she’s the first person to know.

Santana may share her heart with Brittany, but Quinn and Santana share a deeply-rooted friendship. They agree on almost everything and anything.

_ Until now. Until Rachel. _

Quinn doesn’t know why she’s balking about signing Rachel up for Fondue for Two – well, she vaguely knows why but she doesn’t want to admit it. She could only identify it as a warning:  **leave Rachel alone** .

She doesn’t tell her friends that.

Instead, she watches as Brittany follows Santana to wherever she’s going to blow off some steam, while Sam and Puck both wear uncomfortable looks on their faces. Then, her eyes land on Rachel Berry, who is sitting on her spot in the courtyard, pulling a Tupperware from her canvas rucksack, her ferret chewing away at a strip of beef jerky in front of her.

The whole lunchroom joins her as she sings Happy Birthday to Sugar Motta. She watches as Rachel presents him with a homemade cupcake with a candle being lit on the top of it. Sugar grins widely before closing her eyes and making a wish. Then, Sugar blows the candle out.

Quinn starts to wonder how the hell Rachel manages to know their birthdays and their names. She starts to wonder how the hell Rachel manages to laugh even when there’s no joke, dance with no music, sing with only her voice, and say hello to everyone else in school. Quinn starts to wonder how does Rachel manages to be the friendliest person around and has no actual friends with who would share her lunch table with.

Quinn finally realizes what has drawn them to the enigma that is named Rachel Berry.

She’s elusive. She’s a fleeting shadow of an owl at midnight, the soft breeze of summer mornings, the flitting streak of a shooting star across the heavens on a winter night. Everyone doesn’t know what to make of her and they have tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely goes through her and away she flies.

One day after school, as she’s making her way to her fourth period, Rachel bumps into her. Rachel’s long skirt brushes on her bare knees. Rachel gives her that deer-in-the-headlights look, and Quinn suddenly feels nauseated, like her heart is hammering in her chest in intense, crazy palpitations.

Quinn turns on her heel and trots the other way.

She’s late to her History class with Miss Holiday but all she could focus on is how her heart is running like a hunted rabbit, how she feels so warm and so shaken at her encounter with Rachel Berry.

That same day, she tries to follow Rachel after school. She had walked to school that day, and it’s a warm night out. Quinn had known that Rachel doesn’t take the bus, so she figures out that maybe Rachel lives just close to the school.

She doesn’t.

Quinn feels like Rachel had walked all across the entirety of Lima, passing hundreds of houses with perfectly manicured lawns, to downtown Lima and the shopping center, in front of the mall, the business park filled with hubbub, and then to the trails that lead to the mountains.

Cars pull into driveways. Fathers come home to work. Mothers serve dinner on the tables. It’s getting dark and late, and Quinn knows she should have been home by now. Dad would be wondering where she had turned up.

Finally, they reach the exit to I-75, and Rachel turns to walk towards the highway. Sparse homes sprouted here and there, but for the most part, there’s just the empty stretch of the road and fields and woodland around them. After a while, Rachel veered off the highway and walked through a trail into the woodlands by the reserve. The sun has now fully set, with nothing but a bleeding orange perching atop the dusk-lavender hilltops in the distance.

Rachel strums her ukulele. She sings. Suddenly, a pair of beady eyes peek from her rucksack, causing Quinn to fall farther back. The woodland is dark, casting lengthened shadows across the grassland that surrounds it. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls. Another wolf answers the howl, and then another much farther follows.

Quinn stops walking. She watches Rachel as the brunette walks on the bumpy trail, not sparing a glance behind her. She stifles the impulse to call at Rachel and warn her of…what should she warn her of?

Quinn sighs. She turns her heel and starts to walk home.

Santana calls her on Friday night, telling Quinn that they’re picking her up. It’s the McKinley Titans’ first game of the season and the three of them are there to support Puck and Sam, who are both on the football team.

Quinn knows they’d probably lose, but she doesn’t really care. In fact, none of them cares about football. Even Puck and Sam don't care. Her friends are just going to play because they love football and she really thinks the football team could use some of their help. 

It’s no secret that the school board has been threatening to drop football because of the lack of school funds. The tickets are barely enough to pay for electricity to light the field.

So, she tosses her two dollars into the ticket window and follows Santana and Brittany as they get to the mostly empty stands. The game has already begun and is well underway by the time they had managed to find a seat, and Brittany bought them corn dogs to eat.

“I felt bad for the guy who sold them because he just sold like ten of these…since the game started,” Brittany comments as she passes a corn dog at Quinn.

As per usual, McKinley’s marching band gives a showcase during halftime. Their tunes are somewhat old, and they mostly stand instead of marching. Among the students of McKinley High, they call the marching band “The Standing Band”, snickering behind their backs whenever a band member is around. There are no majorettes, no color guards, no sparklers or rifles, no flags.

But tonight it’s different. Rachel Berry is among them, her arms slung across her chest, trapping her trusted ukulele with her. She must have hooked up her ukulele to a microphone and had a microphone with her because Quinn could hear her singing, the dainty melody coming from her ukulele accompanied by the brass tunes of the band.

The marching band lives up to their mockery. They play their set, rooted in their places, while Rachel Berry prances around the grass in her bare feet and her ankle-length, flowing dress. She roams across the field, marching stiffly like a soldier. 

She kicks her heels together as the cheerleaders gaped at her from the sidelines.

Someone in the stands whistled, but a lot of them are wearing the same question on their faces. Others speak it up loudly:  **_Who is she?_ **

When the marching band stops playing and marches off the field, Rachel stays. She twirls down the fifty-yard line as the players return to their benches. She joins in their warm-up exercises. The referee whistles at her so that the players could line up for the kickoff. The ball is already perched on the kicking tee.

And then Rachel dashes for the ball.

The referee blows on his whistle hard, the sound coming off shrill and alarming. The linemen whistle at Rachel as well, but she passes them by, her long flowing dress billowing behind her. The officials start to close in on her, but Rachel doesn’t mind, though. Instead, she punts the ball to the visiting team’s goalpost before dashing out of the football field and out of the stadium.

There are two seconds of silence before the entire place erupts in cheers. The spectators stomped and whistled. The cheerleaders stare up, eyes wide with delight. Some of the cheerleaders do cartwheels and they even do a three-tier pyramid.

For the next game a week later, at least a thousand of Lima’s population turns up. Well, not really a thousand but the spectators are close to more than a few hundred. There’s a line at the ticket window. People are demanding for more corn dogs. Additional police officers are called in. The cheerleaders are peppy, the band marches smartly down the turf even before the game had even started.

The sense of expectation grows as the first half comes to a close. Finn even scores a touchdown for the Titans. When halftime comes, the band marches down the field, but even they are looking around for Rachel.

When their program is finished, they linger for several seconds before reluctantly walking back to their bench on the sideline. When the referee blows his whistle and raises his arm as a signal for the second half to begin, disappointment falls over the entire football stadium.

On the following Monday, the rumor spread around the school like a wildfire: Rachel Berry has been seen in Miss Sue Sylvester’s office. By the time lunch rolls in, the entire student population watches as Kitty Wilde, a senior cheerleader, puts her lunch tray on the table that is occupied by Rachel Berry, who is currently feeding her ferret with small bits of meat.

It’s no doubt then, that Rachel Berry is going to become a Cheerio.

By the time sixth period rolls in, the entire school is buzzing. Would she wear the same Cheerios outfit? Did the cheerleaders want this? Did Coach Sue want Rachel to be in the Cheerios? Better yet, what does Bree has to say about this? It’s not a secret that Bree had disliked Rachel since the start.

Cheerleading practice that day draws a crowd. Quinn stands with the many students who are meaning to watch Rachel jump, learn the cheer, and learn the routines in her plaid skirts.

By the time Friday rolls in that week, Rachel Berry is now wearing the turtleneck red-trimmed white cotton sweater, short pleated skirt, white Nikes, and white socks with the red trims. She looks just like every other cheerleader in the school…and yet, Rachel Berry is not like every other cheerleader in McKinley.

She still sings happy birthday to everyone who has birthdays during lunch hour, and she bakes them birthday cupcakes. She still wears plaid skirts and eccentric clothing on non-game days or when she’s not having cheer practice. She’s still friendly with people she doesn’t know, and no one sits with Rachel at lunch, but she really doesn’t care about it.

Regardless, people have kept their distance from Rachel, and Rachel doesn’t seem to mind. Also, the school body is faintly aware of something significant looming larger and larger each day: Bree Westbrook’s birthday is coming up.

Everyone watches with bated breath as Bree walks up to Rachel’s table in the middle of lunch. For half a minute, everyone just watches as she stands behind Rachel, who is eating a sandwich. There’s silence everywhere, except for the sizzling of pans and the tinkering behind the kitchen. Everyone could swear at that moment that they could hear Rachel chewing her lunch.

Two tables next to Rachel’s, Kitty Wilde stands, ready to defend the new cheerleader, but another cheerio pulls her on her wrists so she could sit back down on the bench. The cheerio whispers something in Kitty’s ear before going back to her lunch. Kitty is left to watch Bree like a hawk.

Then, Bree moves around to Rachel’s side. “I’m Bree, captain of the Cheerios—”

“I know,” Rachel nods her head, putting down her sandwich back into her Tupperware. She looks up at Bree, eyes wide with a warm smile.

“—your captain,” Bree clears her throat as if she had to emphasize that fact. “And my birthday is tomorrow,” she says.

“I know,” Rachel says, mouth still curved wide with a smile.

Bree pauses, her brows scrunching together in confusion. Then, her eyes narrow into cruel slits before she jabs a finger at Rachel’s face. “Don’t…ever try singing to me. If you do, I will personally make your life a living hell here. I’m warning you,” she says before stomping back to Bobby’s side.

Only those closest to her table and Quinn, who have learned to look at Rachel and read the curve of her lips, who could hear her whisper: “I won’t sing to you.”

The next day, every student in McKinley is practically bouncing on their feet. The air around the school crackled. The air bristles with tension as the students anticipated for the buzzer to sound for lunch. 

Jacob Ben Israel is making an online poll on whether Rachel should be scared of Bree or not. Quinn’s friends are betting on what Bree would do with Rachel if ever Rachel would sing to her at lunch. Santana and Puck bets that Bree would slap Rachel so hard, Sam and Brittany both bet that the most Bree would do is to slushy the girl in front of the entire school student body.

When the lunch bell sounds, every student at McKinley drops everything they’re doing and races to the food lines. Everyone moves quickly, speeding through food choices and hurrying to their spots at the courtyard. Everyone whispers to each other, but everyone keeps silent.

Bree enters the courtyard, marching like an invading general. Her trusty Cheerio lieutenants follow her, carrying their food trays with their heads held high. Bree glares at everyone, and her lieutenants scan the room for Rachel. Even Bobby sits on the wrestling team’s table, seemingly afraid of Bree on this very day.

Rachel finally comes in, canvas rucksack hanging on her left shoulder. Her brown ferret pokes its triangular head out of the bag, its dark and beady eyes full of curiosity as it stares at Bree. The entire lunchroom hushes, but Rachel seems to be unaware of the change.

The air crackled with electricity. Artie Abrams accidentally drops his spoon with a clatter and everyone throws him with a murderous look. Everyone, from jock to the nerd to the deadbeats, they all don’t want to miss a thing.

As usual, Rachel finishes her sandwich. She puts the wrappings into the proper receptacle and goes back to her table. Everyone watches Rachel’s every move. She picks up the ukulele and started to strum it.

Everyone, including Quinn, stops breathing.

Then, Rachel starts humming. She stands, strolling from one table to another, strumming and humming – but she never strays close to where Bree is sitting. Everyone hums to the tune of Rachel’s ukulele and all eyes try to follow her.

Bree Westbrook glares at her lunch tray.

Then, Rachel starts singing Happy Birthday. Then, Quinn’s heart races when she realizes Rachel is making her way towards their table. Puck and Sam are already clapping to the tune of the song, and Santana is harmonizing with Rachel’s voice. Brittany stands and does a little tap dance with her feet.

It’s then that Quinn realizes Rachel is singing Happy Birthday to her.

When it comes to the name, she sings ‘happy birthday, Bree Westbrook, happy birthday to you’ — but she is singing the song to Quinn. The blonde feels the blush creep up on her cheeks, but she’s so amused by Rachel. 

True to her word, she did not sing to Bree at all. Quinn sways to the music, smiling at Rachel and singing. She doesn’t exactly know what to do, whether she’d look at her feet or look at Rachel’s face, so she does a little bit of both. Her face is burning by the time Rachel finishes her song and taps a hand on Quinn’s shoulder blade.

“Thanks,” Rachel whispers to her. “And happy birthday,” she laughs mischievously, her laughter trilling and falling like a thousand wind chimes dancing in the summer breeze, exhilarating and mystifying at the same time.

When Rachel twirls back to her table and shoves her stuff back into her rucksack and the ferret slinks back into the pocket of Rachel’s bag, Quinn is still feeling nine ways at once.

Everyone watches as Bree Westbrook stomps out of the courtyard. Quinn’s friends end up not paying each other because it was never in their bet. Jacob claims the entire lunch was a wuss.

It’s also a bit anti-climactic and rather disappointing, but Rachel doesn’t talk to Quinn after it.

On the first day of October, Quinn finds every single locker (including hers) stuck with a miniature pumpkin pail filled with chocolates and candies. Most of them are home-made, wrapped in fancy paper, and metallic foils. Some of the students already ate their sweet treats by the time class has started.

They don’t need to ask anyone who did it.

By then, most of the students of McKinley had decided that having Rachel around is quite good. Many students, including Quinn and her friends, are looking forward to coming to school, wondering what Rachel Berry could be up to that particular day. She gives the student body something to talk about. 

And yet, at the same time, many students, including Quinn and her friends, are holding back – because she’s different, because she’s unlike anyone else. They had no one to compare her to, no one to measure her against. Everyone is afraid to get too close to Rachel Berry because she is an unknown territory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand that is for this month!
> 
> Thank you so much for following this story. Did you like it? Was it good? Do you have any thoughts on particular with this chapter? Send me your thoughts in the comments below!
> 
> Peace and Light, my friends.


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m telling you Quinn, the four of us should submit our college applications to—“

Puck’s knee hits the table and she jumps in surprise when Santana slaps her lunch tray on the table with a clatter during lunchtime on Monday. They’re still waiting for Brittany and Sam to get out of their respective classes and it’s just the three of them on their usual spot.

Santana grins at the two of them with a sickeningly devious smile, and Quinn dreads the words that she expects to fall on Santana’s mouth. Quinn intends to sit back and just watch Santana as she makes a fool out of herself.

“Rachel said yes!” Santana says, her face grinning wide as if she just won a million dollars. “Can you believe that…we’re having Rachel Berry over Fondue for Two on Saturday! McKinley High, better be prepared for the best episode to come!”

It jolts Quinn out of her seat and she listens in on the conversation with interest.

“Since when did you even ask her about it?” Puck mutters, desperately glancing at the doors of the lunchroom and eyeing his food. “Quinn’s made sure to tell you not to ask her about signing up to Fondue.”

“So I was over at Britt’s last Saturday and it so happened she and Britt are doing this partner thing in their AP Calc class. I don’t know really; I don’t care what the brainiacs do or something. I kind of just hung around there playing games with Sam and all that, then Rachel asked for Quinn here. So I told them all about Quinn, yeah I told them all about your weird-ass shit phase when you didn't know how to use a tampon back when we were thirteen, Lucy and how you didn't grow boobs until about fifteen," Santana snickers evilly at Quinn. "And then I told her all about Fondue and popped the question. Easy,” Santana says as if there’s something more than what she had led on.

Both Quinn and Puck just stare at her.

“Y’all should thank me," Santana says. "Mention a whole minute of my name when the credits roll.”

Quinn smiles amusedly to herself. “Do you even hear how ridiculous you sound like?”

Santana cackles as she waves Quinn off. “Yeah, whatever Quinn. I just did my job,” she shrugs and turns to Puck, opening her palms up. “Puck, pay me up before Britt and Trouty get here.”

“Seriously?” Quinn mutters in abject horror. “You guys were betting on it?” she stares at Puck who just shrugs and pulls out a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. Santana kisses the bill and skips back to the lunch line, probably going to buy something with Puckerman’s twenty dollars.

“What? It was just a harmless bet! I didn’t even know she’d actually get Berry to agree with going to Fondue. How am I supposed to know?” Puck says defensively.

Quinn is about to clap back at him but the Pierce twins have arrived with their food. Santana arrives not long after, carrying five mini-cups of frozen yogurt. The Latina tells them it’s her way of celebrating, for signing Rachel up for Fondue.

Quinn’s pretty sure it’s Puck’s bet money she bought it with.

On Friday night, McKinley High Titans are set to play against Mifflin High School Jets. The game is going to be held on neutral ground – an hour’s drive from Lima in Marion High School’s football stadium. The school had the early bell, to give the students enough time for the drive to Marion.

She follows Santana’s red Chevrolet as they exit the highway that leads to Marion County. Quinn watches the other cars pouring out alongside them on the road, seemingly having the same destination as they do.

It turns out, that more than half of the population of McKinley High has driven to Marion to watch the Titans play. Brittany spies them in a spot that has a very good view of the game, and Quinn offers to buy them food and drinks.

Santana, ever the opportunist, lists down an obnoxious amount of hotdogs. Quinn ends up dragging Santana to the food stand because the Latina could not decide whether she likes the hotdog with the mustard or the corn dog with the cheese dip. Santana also goaded Quinn to buy the biggest slushie drink.

The lines are not that long yet, so they don’t have a hard time getting their food, but people are definitely coming in. When they get back to the bleachers, there are a lot more people on the stands already. They wheedle their way through the sitting spectators, both plopping down beside Brittany.

Quinn notes that there’s almost an equal amount of people wearing an assemblage of red caps and red shirts who are cheering for McKinley and people wearing yellow who are cheering for Mifflin.

“Do you think we’d win?” Santana asks.

“Totally,” Brittany says. “I mean, Sam’s pretty sure of it. With Rachel on the cheer squad, it’s not hard to do the impossible. What about you, Quinn? Do you think we’ll win?”

Quinn’s eyes stray to the red-and-white cheerleaders on one side of the field. She spots Rachel, doing a little dance that’s totally different from the routine the Cheerios are doing.

“Yeah,” she breathes out. “I think we got this.”

The truth is, McKinley High certainly hasn’t got it.

Throughout the first half of the game, the Titans are always catching up but barely so. It doesn’t have to take someone who knows football to see that the Titans are struggling to win. The Jets’ greatest arsenal is their pint-sized running back who wears an eye shield, who seems to have the capacity to dodge everything in his path. For the first time, the McKinley High School Titans are losing.

Through the halftime show, Rachel sings We Got the Beat with the marching band and the cheer squad. People sing, and it seems to uplift the spirits from McKinley. When the second half starts, the people from McKinley are somber and quiet, like they’re each holding their breath.

The players line up for the scrimmage. The Jets have the ball and the Jets’ running back, the pint-size footballer with the eye shield makes his dash to the end zone for a touchdown. Karofsky, the Titan’s most aggressive player, is running towards him at a seemingly incredible speed.

Coach Beiste is yelling from the bench; the cheerleaders are not even cheering – they’re just looking at Karofsky barreling towards the Jets player. Everything seems to blur and happen in slow motion during those few seconds. The player takes a step back, avoiding Karofsky. 

Then, it happens.

It happens with a sickening crunch that’s heard throughout the field. It sounds like a twig snapping. The entire field is silent, save for the screams of agony coming from the Jets player who is writhing and crying on the grass, his right foot twisted at a grisly angle.

There’s a pause, the world falls silent for a moment –– and then a beat. 

Then, in a flurry of words and screams and instructions, the coaches and team staff from the Jets sprint across the field. Spectators from both the Jets and McKinley lean over the rafters just to see what’s wrong with their running back.

“What the fuck is she doing?” Santana mutters as they watch Rachel running towards the fallen Jets player.

The players from the Jets get to their fallen teammate, but they’re not the first to get there. Despite all the ruckus, Rachel has somehow managed to get there before anyone else ever did. 

The Mifflin cheerleaders sit on their benches, eyes stricken and shedding tears, watching with distraught eyes as the eccentric cheerleader from McKinley High takes off the helmet and the eye shield from the Jets player and holds his head on her lap. The football player looks so young, like a child who is lost and hurting.

The people from McKinley had started to whisper. From her perch on the rafters, Quinn could see that Rachel is whispering words in his ear, and he’s gripping her wrists tightly, shaking his head and crying. Quinn could practically read his lips begging Rachel for something.

The ambulance arrives, and the emergency technician loads the injured player, Rachel goes with him. He’s still holding her hand as they climb into the ambulance. As the ambulance drives out of the field, everyone stands on their seats and applauses.

Quinn claps her hands too, but she doesn’t know why she’s applauding. Are they applauding for Rachel? Are they applauding for the fallen Jets player? Quinn looks around, trying to gauge the looks of the spectators who are clapping and wearing the red-and-white shirt printed with “ **GO TITANS!** ”.

Are they clapping because they’re happy to see the Jets player go?

Without their legendary running back, the Jets are a pushover. It doesn’t take long for the Titans to catch up. The people from Lima are screaming, out for blood. They want to mop the Jets up for giving them a hard time during the first half.

When Sam makes the touchdown three minutes before the game ends, they all know the game is decided. McKinley High wins the game. The stadium erupts in cheers, each person wearing a red shirt screaming his or her McKinley pride.

Quinn knows she should feel happy. She should, by all means, feel happy – but when she looks at the Jets stuck in their corner, head hung low and eyes full of worry as they checked on their phones, the words of Rachel Berry are coming back to haunt her.

**_Those kinds of games are no longer fun if someone is hurting and feeling bad._ **

A part of Quinn somehow tips her that if Bree can leave Rachel behind for no apparent reason like the way she did with that game with Perry High, they’re definitely leaving Rachel behind this time. In a split decision, she tells Santana to go ahead. When Santana looks at her with an accusing glare, she shrugs at the girl.

“Dad asked me to pick stuff up on the way home. Dad has friends coming over on Sunday night,” she lies through her teeth and she prays that she sounds convincing because Santana can just smell a lie even if it’s a fucking mile away.

Santana looks at her with shrewd, gleaming eyes but the brunette just shrugs her shoulder. “Fine, but don’t forget to show up at the communications center tomorrow afternoon at one. I promised Rachel we’re starting at two,” she says at Quinn before marching back to her car where Brittany is already waiting.

Quinn slinks by her car, waiting for Rachel. Slowly but surely, the crowds are starting to thin out. The first ones to leave are the ones from Lima, seemingly unable to stay a bit longer at the game that they almost lost.

She gives it thirty minutes. She tells herself, that if Rachel doesn’t show up within the next thirty minutes, she has to bail and Rachel would have to find a way to get home, which is an hour away.

Quinn doesn’t have to wait long.

Rachel is being driven by a gray Sedan. She thanks the woman behind the wheel and skips to the stadium. She turns around her, eyes wide as saucers as if she just remembered that she had to be here and not in the hospital.

“You got left again,” Quinn says as a way of announcing her presence.

The brunette cheerleader had her back turned away from her, and when Rachel turns around, Quinn sees the happiest brown eyes she’s ever had the pleasure of seeing. Rachel lets out a squeal of delight.

“You’re here!”

Quinn shoves her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. She kicks a stone that’s close to her feet, seemingly finding it the most interesting thing in the world. “This is becoming a tradition, huh. You, being left by the bus and me…giving you a ride home.”

Rachel seems to pick up on the tone of her voice and she wrings her hands nervously in front of her. Quinn sighs, and she sweeps her thumb towards her car. Rachel cautiously follows her, and they silently make way to their seats.

“We won, by the way,” Quinn tells her as she turns the ignition. “In case you’re wondering about it.”

Rachel nods, her eyes glued to the asphalt in front of them. “He’s broken his ankle. He’s going to surgery in a few hours but he will be okay,” the brunette almost chokes, her voice somber. Her eyes glazed over with mist, and Quinn watches as she swallows hard. “In case you’re wondering about it.”

They don’t speak throughout the drive, and Rachel falls asleep halfway through their travel. Quinn doesn’t wake her up, not until she pulls up in front of the house with the white picket fence and the yellow mailbox.

Fondue for Two is a forty-minute online talk show that is originally shot in Brittany’s bedroom, but later on, when they had partnered with the school during junior year, it’s been moved into one of the communication rooms in the AV Hall, now complete with a bedroom set-up that is specifically made to imitate Brittany’s own bedroom. 

On a table located by the foot of the bed, there’s a large, red pot of cheese fondue surrounded by either bread, broccoli, roasted potatoes, or apples. Brittany prepares real cheese fondue made of an even blend of gouda, cheddar, corn or tapioca starch, and chicken stock.

Over the dish, Brittany spends the first twenty minutes interviewing the guest, making small talk, and silly comments. She often asks them about their favorite bands, their idols, their dreams and motivations, how they pull through high school…and the like. 

The next twenty minutes is what Santana jokingly calls “The Inquisition” – the part where students from McKinley High who are online and watching them live will have the chance to ask the particular guest some questions through a real-time chat box that Brittany will have to read out loud.

This is for that particular reason, the last twenty minutes of the show, that had held Quinn back from signing Rachel up. She had dreaded everything the students at McKinley High would say – or ask.

Especially after Friday night.

Santana is pumped. Brittany is rocking on her seat. She could tell that Puck and Sam are excited. There’s a tense air around McKinley as they all set the cameras up an hour before airing. She runs the final tests at one-thirty, just as Rachel arrives.

From her perch in the control room, she watches as Santana and Brittany giving Rachel a briefing. The AV Club adviser, Mrs. Wallace, overseers most of the job, but she rarely gives out anything, wholly trusting the show to the students. Sam gives her a thumbs-up as he carries the handheld close-up camera that’s mainly focused on the guest. Puck gives her a thumb’s up as well to signal that his camera is good to go. One of the junior AV kids gives her another thumb’s up to let her know that the longshot camera is all set. 

Everyone is in a frenzy. Quinn had never seen her friends so invested since their early days back in Brittany’s room. Santana and Mrs. Wallace get into the control room, and the Latina sits behind the row of computer screens and a rack of buttons. Two of the junior AV kids act as the graphics and audio people. Santana gives her a thumbs up.

“I’m hot people,” Quinn says clearly into the mouthpiece of her headset. “Give me your right thumb if you’re copying.”

Puck raises his right thumb. Sam raises his right thumb. Brittany seats Rachel on the other side of the table and raises her right thumb. The graphics and audio guys give her a right thumb.

Santana gives her the middle finger with her right hand, cackling like a madwoman. Mrs. Wallace gives her a reprimanding look, but that just spurs Santana on.

Quinn glares at her, raising her eyes one last time through the glass panel of the control room. “Alright people, let’s get this show on the road,” she says, separating the set from the control room.

Then, Rachel is waving at her. “Hello, Quinn,” she says in a squeaky, whispery voice.

Quinn freezes. She doesn’t have any idea where Rachel knew about her name. Granted, in their time together after those games, she was never able to tell Rachel her name. Still, her name feels foreign as it falls from Rachel’s lips.

Quinn takes a deep breath. Shaking herself free from thoughts of Rachel she clears her throat. “Okay, people. Ready, music. Ready opening spiel.”

She pauses, blinking at Santana. On cue, Santana adjusts the buttons. Quinn breathes. Rachel looks swell, like she’s so happy to be in Fondue. Quinn feels the dread building up into a crescendo. _She certainly isn't happy to have Rachel in Fondue._

Quinn nods to Santana. “Music, intro.”

Brittany goes through the opening spiel without a flaw. Santana wears a wide, proud grin as her girlfriend’s face fills the monitor. Puck is focusing his camera on the blonde host. Sam, on the other hand, is focused on Rachel and to Quinn, the world outside them melts away, leaving only the small room where her friends and Rachel are sitting in, and the music and the show is all that exists between her and Rachel.

For the first twenty minutes, the questions are basic – favorite color, fruits, trivia, movies, bands, boys, girls, and cliques. Brittany asks her if she had siblings, or if she plays any sport. Rachel had been most gracious as she answers all of the questions thrown at her. Quinn had kept control over the entire run, calling all the shots.

Many of them about what she thinks of McKinley High. Brittany shuffles on the stack of index cards, and she announces to the viewers that the time for their interview has passed and it’s already time to read messages in the real-time chat boxes.

“Puck, close in on Brittany,” Quinn says. Without turning around, she speaks to Santana. “Bring up Britt. Run the questions on the marquee screen so Britt could read them in three…two…one.”

Brittany smiles at the camera before reading the first question. “So from Jacob Ben Israel, is your pet a squirrel?”

Rachel just laughs, her voice trilling and lilting with amusement. “No, Milo is a ferret.”

Brittany smiles. For a moment, Quinn feels that maybe, things are going to turn out fine. No one would ask Rachel about Friday night, no one would ask stuff about Rachel that Quinn would gladly not have it talked about during the show. 

Brittany shuffles on her seat. “From Becca Warren, what is a ferret? And if I get bitten by one, will I die?”

“A ferret is a mammal,” Rachel supplies calmly. “Like the weasels. They eat a lot of meat. They are obligate carnivores, so that means they can only eat meat and other meat-based products. If you get bitten by a ferret, you can have rabies shots. Unvaccinated ferrets can get rabies. Milo here is a ferret rescued when the shelter he’s in had caught fire a few years back.”

Brittany stares right into the camera. “People, please remember to limit your questions to one question only and if you have follow-up questions, you will have to retype it in another message,” she says.

“From Phil Lipoff,” Brittany says, brows knitted in worry. “Why did you stay with the Jets player on Friday’s game?”

Quinn feels something being lodged in her throat. She must have spoken too early because she had jinxed it. She mentally kicks herself. Now, Rachel has to answer the damn question.

But Rachel just smiles, albeit a bit subdued. “He was alone and scared. He’s hurting. He wouldn’t let go of my hand and he doesn’t want to go to the hospital with no one else.”

The next question comes from Paul Sandusky. “Why McKinley High?” Brittany asks.

Rachel’s brows furrow, and it takes a little bit longer for her to answer. She worries her bottom lip, before leaning towards Brittany. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question. Can Paul expound it a little bit?”

A new question must have popped because Brittany is clearing her throat. “What Paul seems to have meant is, why did you go to McKinley High this year?”

“Sam, close in on Rachel,” Quinn finds herself speaking into the microphone just as Rachel is about to open her mouth and answer.

“Oh,” she says, swallowing hard. “I’ve been homeschooled all my life. I guess, I just wanted to make friends.”

She hears Santana whisper something under her breath and it brings her behind the Latina’s back so she could see the screens. She leans over, squinting at the miniature version of the marquee screen where Brittany reads the comments and chats in real-time.

 **_Bree Westbrook:_ ** _You sure do have a different way of making friends. Now the whole school is mad at you!_

Quinn stands there, shell-shocked. It is happening. Somehow, her mouth clamps shut and her feet stay rooted on the floor. Her arms flail at her sides dangerously, devoid of feeling and strength.

The marquee screen could be seen by both the guest and the host. Santana looks up to her, but she just keeps staring through the glass panel, watching as the color and the light in Rachel’s eyes simmer away for a flickering moment. A new chat message pops up, but it’s not a question. Brittany doesn’t know what to do, and she frantically eyes the control room, blue eyes clearly screaming for help. When Quinn doesn’t answer, Santana moves to clear her throat.

“Britt, tell them they can’t send statements like that,” Santana says into the microphone sitting on her desk.

Brittany comes to Rachel’s defense. “You guys, you can’t do that. Don’t send statements. Ask questions instead. And be nice. We’re not here to hurt our friends in school.”

 **_Jenna St. Clare:_ ** _Why do you help players from other schools?_

 **_Olivia Moore:_ ** _You’re just trying to get attention, aren’t you?_

 **_Janet Bauer:_ ** _Why can’t you be normal?_

 **_Derek Clarke:_ ** _Why don’t you wear make-up?_

 **_Aaron Hughes:_ ** _What’s the matter with you?_

 **_Bree Westbrook:_ ** _Are you from Mars or something? Why are you so different?_ ****

**_Bree Westbrook:_ ** _Why don’t you go back from where you came from?_ ****

**_Bree Westbrook:_ ** _We don’t need you here. Why can’t you just disappear?_

It’s Santana who turns the whole thing down and calls it quits. She flips the master toggle that’s in front of Quinn and the entire live feed is down – marquee screen, the cameras, the sounds, the microphones.

“Mierda!” Santana says with an air of frustration, slamming the keyboard in front of her one final time. “That’s it! Show’s over.”

Puck, Sam, and Rob put down their cameras, their shoulders slumping off. Mrs. Wallace’s eyes flit worriedly from Quinn to Santana and to the glass panel. Past the glass panel, Quinn watches as a single tear rolls down on Brittany’s cheek. Rachel stands from her seat, squares her shoulders, and slowly walks to the nearest exit to get out of the room.

Quinn slowly takes off her headset and rests it on Santana’s table. She lets out the breath she had been holding ever since the interview started and she stares through the glass, watching Brittany as the blonde gingerly walks off the stage to join her twin brother off the set. She keeps on wondering where it all went wrong and yet she knows exactly where it all went wrong.

Santana glares at her from where she’s sitting. “We’re fucked, Fabray,” the Latina says. “We are fucked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand that's all for this month, folks!
> 
> Thank you so much for being this patient with this piece. I hope I did well. I wonder if I can get eight more comments this month just so we can make the comment count here into 20 and maybe 12 more kudos so we can up the kudos count to 40? Let me know, my friends, what you think of this chapter and this story so far. I'd really, really love to hear from you.
> 
> Happy Holidays, everyone! Celebrate with Peace and Light. xx


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! In celebration of New Year's Day, I give you a bonus chapter of the story. I'll still update in the twentieth, no worries. I hope you will enjoy this.
> 
> Also, can we get the kudos count to 60 before I do the next update? I would love to see the kudos count go up. Help me get to 60, please! It would mean the world to me.

The episode is immediately taken down from Fondue’s social media platforms. No one had objected when Santana deleted the file from the main computer’s memory. Of course, deleting all the files’ versions or taking it down from the Internet did not stop students from McKinley High from talking about it. In fact, most of the students already knew about the fateful episode by the time Sunday evening rolls in.

The entire school is buzzing with whispers and tension when the school doors open on Monday morning. It’s the first week of December, and it’s Skylar Cooper’s birthday. Quinn wonders if the hostility that had been displayed last Saturday would spill into the halls of the school on Monday.

And like the entire population of WMHS, Quinn wonders if Rachel would still sing to Skylar, considering that there are many of the popular students who are harboring a great amount of hostility towards her.

Quinn finds out at lunch that the answer is  **yes** .

The next day is Janet Bauer’s birthday. Rachel sings Janet a Happy Birthday song, but Janet walks out halfway through. Rachel finishes the song, even if many of the cheerleaders are glaring at her. And when Quinn catches Rachel’s sight as she makes a pirouette across the lunchroom, the brunette smiles at her.

Quinn realizes then, what truly a remarkable person Rachel Berry is.

On Friday night, McKinley High plays the biggest football game they’ve ever had. The game is being held in Mount Vernon High’s neutral ground, and the Titans are playing for a spot at the state semi-finals against Mansfield High Tigers.

The talk of their chances at winning the game had eclipsed the debacle that had been Saturday’s Fondue episode. Everyone at McKinley High is thinking about it: marquee signs of McKinley Titans in red, parading before their very eyes, the confetti of white and red falling all across the field. Perhaps, Finn Hudson will make a legendary touchdown.

The shift of McKinley’s attention from Rachel Berry's disastrous guesting at Fondue to the upcoming football game is something that Quinn is silently grateful for.

Quinn rides with Santana and Brittany to the game. The stadium was already packed by the time they arrived. Most of the spectators come from Lima and McKinley High, but there are also large swathes of people from Mansfield who are wearing an ensemble of orange, yellow and black.

Santana leads them to a row of empty seats in the middle stands. They’re farther than Quinn would have liked but they still get a good view of the game. The noise inside the stadium escalates when the cheerleaders appear from the dugout, shaking their pom-poms and cheering as they fall into formation on the turf.

The Mansfield players parade on the other side of the field, their heads proudly held high. Their cheerleading squad performs cartwheels and pirouettes. The spectators make their own game chants, and the noise grows louder and louder as the last of the players and cheerleaders from Mansfield trickle into the field. 

Rachel is wearing the biggest grin in her face. She shakes her pom-pom wildly, her skirt fluttering madly in the air. Some of the male cheerleaders are carrying red-and-white flags, furling, and fluttering as the cheerleaders make their routines across the field. The crowd goes wild with anticipation when the Titans start to pour out of the dugout, peppered with the cheerleaders’ cheers.

There’s a quiet lull as the players sit on the benches while watching the referee confer with the two schools’ respective quarterbacks, formally explaining the rules one final time. Everyone waits with bated breath when the players start lining up on the 30-yard line.

Then, the referee’s whistle blows and the entire stadium falls quiet as red clashes with orange on the green turf.

The cheers rattled the rafters. Titan supporters are screaming, screeching as Harry Carrd, Mansfield’s quarterback, makes a complete pass to one of Mansfield’s wide receivers. The wide receiver makes a run for it, and he barely makes it to the 40-yard line before Karofsky mauls him head-on.

The ball is in play again, and Carrd makes a complete pass. On the third play, Mike Chang intercepts the play and he manages to throw the ball out of bounds before one of Mansfield’s wide receivers could catch it.

The fifteen-minute quarter is down to eleven when the ball is in play again and one of Mansfield’s players is guaranteed a free kick to the ball due to Carrd’s fourth down, much to the chagrin of the Titan’s avid supporters. The kicker sends the ball flying straight to the goalposts, earning Mansfield the first three points of the game.

On the next pass, Carrd intercepts the ball but instead of passing it to his receiver, he takes two steps back before running with the ball across the side of the field. The crowd goes wild -- the Mansfield spectators cheering for Carrd for the touchdown and the McKinley spectators booing at Carrd. Then, Puckerman manages to tackle him.

Quinn stares at the large timer on the other side of the stadium. There are only two minutes and a half left for the quarter. The snap happens once again, and the spectators are back on their feet again as Carrd evades the Titans and he makes a spur-of-the-moment pass to his wide receiver. The wide receiver dashes to the end zone, too fast for any of the Titans to catch up, and he makes a touchdown, pushing the game points 0-9.

Throughout the first half of the game, the Titans have fallen farther and farther behind. The 0-9 gap during the first 15-minute quarter had become a 3-16 gap, favoring the Tigers from Mansfield. The Titan supporters are silenced into desperation and disappointment. There’s no turnaround during the second half. This time, the Titans are met with not one or two excellent players, but an entire team composed of much better players than the Titans. 

This time, no one breaks an ankle.

Quinn knows that in this sea of people who are very desperate to hold on to their winning streak, someone from McKinley High is secretly wishing that Carrd would break his ankle or injure himself.

The last few seconds of the final quarter ticks by and the Titans are still floundering. The cheers from Mansfield supporters are like volleys of arrows piercing through McKinley’s grand delusions of winning.

Who are they kidding? Did they ever think that a measly high school McKinley High could ever win against a powerhouse like Mansfield?

Finn gets tackled on the turf, and he groans in misery as four Mansfield Tigers pin him to the ground. A collective groan rises from the McKinley spectators. Some of the people from Lima walk out, their faces red and full of wrath and thunder, upset that they are not winning. Girls in the rafters start weeping. Boys start cursing and booing. 

Quinn watches as the cheerleaders cry into their pom-poms as Finn falls the second time. When Coach Beiste calls for a time-out, the cheerleaders start cheering, their eyes glistening with tears and mascara tracks threading violently against their cheeks. They pump their hands and shout and hollered, but their eyes are empty and their arms are slack.

Except for Rachel.

Her eyes are dry and her cheeks are still colored in robust shimmer. There are no mascara tracks in her eyes. Her voice doesn’t crack as she hollers the cheers. There is no sag in her shoulders. She shakes her fists wildly at the air, pumps her arms with the determination that could trump Bonaparte’s during the battle of Austerlitz.

She shook a trembling hand of defiance against McKinley’s gloom, pom-pom quivering slightly in the frigid early winter air -- even if McKinley is losing fifteen points with a minute to go. Her eyes shine with ferocious resolve, shaking her hands at the spectators as the Tigers line for the snap.

Even with just ten seconds left, a Bonaprte in the middle of the football field, she keeps yelling and yelling as Carrd runs the entire length of the field, posing for a touchdown. The Titans start to flock towards him, but the Tigers seem to understand the purpose of the drive, and they collectively defend their quarterback.

And then, Rachel’s face is bloody.

**“NOOOOOOO!”**

Quinn screams as she rises to her feet just as Carrd reaches the end zone for a touchdown and the Mansfield fans scream. The timer buzzes with a deafening sound. Santana yells profane words at no one in particular, while Brittany tries to restrain the dark-haired girl and get her back on the seat. She watches as Puckerman and Sam take off their helmets, their heads hanging low in disappointment. Then, her eyes find the pint-sized cheerleader standing in the middle of the crowd of people, her uniform a ruin, and her face soaked in red.

It’s not blood. Someone had thrown a red slushie at her. As the clock expires and the Tigers fans pour into the court, Rachel just stands there, her eyes wide as saucers -- staring up at the crowd in utter bewilderment.

Bitter laughter spouts from most of the McKinley fans, and some even applaud.

“Damn, this game sucks. Let’s go, Quinn. I feel depressed as hell,” Santana mutters as the girl stands from her seat while taking Brittany's hand in hers. “Let’s go grab some ice cream. We’ll fetch Puck and Sam along the way,” she says with a tone that leaves no room for argument -- and it’s enough to make Quinn hustle out of her seat.

Quinn feels a dreadful pit in her stomach as she watches Rachel's red-soaked face amongst the sea of people, and she doesn't dare to take away her eyes from the girl’s head until they are well into the stadium exit.

That night, Quinn rides in the backseat of Santana’s mother’s van, trying to cheer the two footballers up. She promises her two friends the biggest Jenga Fries Tower from McDonald’s. After two hours, two tubs of vanilla ice cream, several rounds of Halo: Infinite games, and an almost-offensive amount of french fries later, Puck and Sam are back to their usual cheery selves.

The next morning, Mrs. Lopez drops her off at their house. As she jogs the flagstone steps up to their porch, Quinn spies a yellow envelope sticking out of the mailbox. When she opens it, she realizes that it's a card. It’s one of those little third-grade sorts of cards, showing a smiling caricature of Quinn with her eyes closed and her chin up as if relishing the rain. In the drawing, however, instead of rainwater, Quinn is relishing the rain of tiny gardenias and sunflowers.

And as third-graders often do, the card is signed in code: a small caricature of a yellow little star at the bottom right corner of the fancy paper.

Quinn walks through the hallways on Monday morning, the card feeling heavy inside the binder stuffed in her backpack. She covertly watches if someone else has gotten a card like hers at school. She has an idea who had given the card, she just had to confirm it. When Tina Chang from Rachel's homeroom stuffs an identical card to her bag, Quinn's suspicion on who the card-giver is just grows.

She sidles close to Mike during Mrs. Bunner's AP Biology class, craning her neck as much as possible so she could call to the Asian boy. She slowly inches her chair towards Mike's, trying ti be as inconspicuous as possible

"Did Rachel ever give you anything today?" she asks Mike once she's close enough.

Mike shrugs. "She gave us cards," he whispers back. "During homeroom. All of us. Did she give you one, too?"

Quinn feels the heat rise on her cheeks. "N-no, she didn't," she stammers, her cheeks flushing hotly and she tries to hide the blush on her cheeks by furiously writing down notes in her binder.

During lunch time, there is a hush in the air. The usual chatter is transformed into whispered conversations. The usual clink of the utensils are muted. The school is mourning for the Titans and their loss against Mansfield.

"I heard she gave everyone in her homeroom a card," Santana says as she chews on her carrot stick. Santana narrows her eyes at her, dark eyes probing at her.

"Did she give you anything, Quinn?"

Santana is suddnely wearing that stupid smirk on her face that makes her look like she's twice the asshole she is and Quinn knows that the dark-haired girl is grilling her, so she averts her eyes and stares into her sandwich.

"No," Quinn lies through her teeth, stabbing at her chicken with more force than necessary.

"Heard she might be off the team soon," Santana says. "It'd spell disaster for her, you'll see," Santana tells her.

Quinn just huffs at her food.

Meanwhile, Rachel is sitting with Mercedes and Tina. She doesn't seem to mind that all eyes are on her, even though she seems subdued. Instead, she just talks with the girls she's eating lunch with.

As the lunch period is ending, she gets up from her seat. No one had a birthday, and she doesn't sing to anyone. Her ukulele is nowhere in sight.

She picks up her trash and picks up her tote bag. Everyone, including Quinn, is sure that Rachel's just going to head out of the lunch room, but instead of walking straight to the exit, she makes a detour towards Quinn's table.

Quinn doesn't have to turn around to see. Santana's coyly grinning from ear to ear and everyone else are wearing looks at the various stages of surprise and bewilderment.

"Hi, Quinn."

Quinn feels the heat crawl from her chest to her neck to her cheeks. She tries to focus on anything but the girl standing behind her. Instead, she doesn't take her eyes off her sandwich.

"I...I gotta go," she mumbles helplessly as she tries to escape from the lunch room. She pretends that she's running late for her class, even though the bell hasn't rung yet. She bolts out of the lunch room, certain that all eyes are on her.

She avoids everyone that day. She spends most of the afternoon in Fondue's control room. She goes straight home after school. She stayed upstairs until Dad knocks on her door to tell her it's dinnertime.

"I'll finish up this project first, Dad!" she yells through the door even though she's just lying on her bed, flipping the card Rachel had written her. She reads and re-reads it and re-reads it -- again and again and her voice is like a mixtape on repeat inside her head.

"Hi, Quinn."

Thirty minutes later, Dad opens the door to her bedroom, poking his head in. He notices the card on her table and he raises a brow, a playful smile just tucked at the sides of his lips. "Some projects, huh. Is that for Art Class?"

She groans. Dad tells her dinner's getting cold so she forces herself to get out of bed and pad her way to the kitchen. Dad seats across from her as she eats her dinner, watching her but not saying anything.

“Your Aunt Ellie’s flying in on Saturday afternoon," he says softly.

Quinn just nods, her mind drifting away. “I can make her crostatas,” she offers. “The large raspberry ones with the sugary jam on top.”

"Your Aunt Ellie is diabetic,” Russel says.

Quinn shrugs. “They probably didn't have crostatas in Borneo. Why does she even have to go for months on some crazy expedition anyway? She's like sixty or something.”

“Don’t let her hear you speak like that. And it's research, who knows what Ellie has brought for us this time.”

"God, I hope it's not some dying monkey like the last time," Quinn groans as she shoves the last bit of her food and she stands to put the plates into the sink.

She remembers the previous year when Ellie brought home an almost-senile macaque named Lear and it wreaked havoc in their backyard when Ellie dropped by for a weekend visit. Ellie had moved to Lima a couple of years ago, after transferring her teaching and botanical career from Ohio University and moving on to OSU.

The monkey had driven them nuts on end during the entirety of Ellie's stay and Russel looked like he almost regrets it allowing Ellie to move closer to their home. The monkey died some four months later in its sleep.

"I'd ban her inside the house if she does bring something exotic like Lear again," Russel says thoughtfully, but Quinn knows he doesn't mean it.

After dinner, she goes back to re-reading the card Rachel had left her. The moon rises above the treetops, sending its silver light beaming down on her through windows. A barn owl hoots from a distance, and a slight, icy breeze blows in from the mountaintops.

Under the moonlight, Rachel's voice comes like the softest whisper.

"Hi, Quinn."

Quinn wakes up to the familiar smell of honey-glazed bacon and pancakes emanating from the kitchen that Sunday morning. She jumps out of bed, knowing that it only means one thing: Aunt Ellie is home.

The old woman is wearing her usual khaki pants and her gray shirt, bent over the griddle flipping rounded cakes. On another pan, bacon is sizzling.

"Hello, Bumpkin!" Ellie smiles at her, giving her batch of pancakes one final flip. "Good night's sleep?"

Quin grins as she skips towards the kitchen counter, where a large stack of bacon is glistening in its greased glory. She greedily takes a strip on the pile and pops it into her mouth, relishing the taste of tender meat on her tongue.

"You had a late flight last night," Quinn says.

"Some wind turbulence over the Midwest. My flight got delayed twice," Ellie tells her, holding up two hands to emphasize her point. “Your Dad’s gone golfing with his buddies from work hours ago, what’s your plan today?”

Quinn just dumbly shakes her head. She doesn’t really have anything to do, really.

Ellie slides another plate of pancakes in front of Quinn. "So, wanna see what I brought with me?"

A warm emotion bubbles in her chest. Excitement flares up, blooming its warmth around her torso. She nods, and Ellie laughs. Quinn feels like an eleven-year-old once again, eyes wide with awe and wonder to the magic Ellie has in her fingertips.

"It's in my laboratory in Columbus," Ellie tells her. "Obviously, I can't bring it here.You can bring the gang with us and show them around if you want. We have a lot of new additions and I’ve got lots to show you," Ellie suggests.

"Puck and Sam have pools to clean but I can bring Satan and her girlfriend around."

Ellie claps her hands in glee at the prospect of having Quinn's friends with them for the afternoon, deliberately ignoring Quinn's insulting nickname for Santana. Ellie’s somewhat used to the banter, too. Santana had practically grown up in their household anyway and had treated Ellie like a distant aunt.

"This is perfect! We’ll have Santana’s favorite cinnamon buns! How are my other two favorite girls anyway?"

"Satan still thinks she's the hottest girl around town," Quinn says as she stacks her bacon, forming it into a cabin-esque structure. "Brittany's still Brittany. You should see her cat, it's grown like four pounds since you left."

Elli grins. "Is that so? I'll be visiting Whitney sometime this week," she says thoughtfully. "Run along now once you finish your breakfast. Go get prepared and we’ll leave once you’re all set."

Santana is the world's biggest blabbermouth.

She's almost ready to shove her fist down Santana’s throat or stuff Brittany’s fat cat down her mouth (whichever works best) because the girl is running her motor mouth all throughout the ride. Santana spends the entire car ride groaning about their near-win at the game against Mansfield and the incident with Rachel during their game with the Mifflin Jets. Ellie just nods and smiles through the rearview.

When Santana mentions the slushie that people threw at Rachel during the game, Ellie's face morphs into shock, but the older woman schools her features quickly. As Santana continues to tattle and talk about what happened, Quinn feels more and more on edge.

She subtly raises her brow at the dark-haired Latina, hoping to get the message across, but the girl just doesn't get it. Santana tells Ellie about Rachel's episode on Fondue.

Thankfully, just as Santana is about to tell Ellie that bit about the card she got after the Mansfield game and how she literally flipped when Rachel said hi to her at the lunchroom, the car takes a left turn and they come upon a wide gray gate.

"We're here!" Ellie exclaims and Santana looks a bit disappointed at the fact that she's been robbed of her chance to talk about the things Quinn would rather not want to talk about just yet because it’s a can of worms she’s not ready to open.

Ellie gets out of the car to open the gate herself, and Santana shoots her a dirty look when Ellie is out of sight. Quinn shoots her friend a death glare.

They drive a little more until they pull up in front of a two-story building with chipped ivory paint. Tall trees tower at the back of the building, giving the impression that the woodland is about to swallow the structure whole.

Ellie leads them to a cobblestone pathway that paves way to a door. Ellie fishes out a key card and inserts it to the card slot. The indicator light goes from orange to green in a heartbeat and there’s a beep. Ellie pushes the door forward, and it opens up to an empty lobby.

“Many of the students are mostly gone during the weekends,” Ellie explains. “Except for those who have ongoing research and those who work as student assistants,” she tells the girls as they pass by a room with two dark-haired girls who are both hunched over microscopes, seemingly studying an organism under the lenses.

“Those are Nat and Lena,” Ellie says as they quietly pass the room by. “Those are two of my best students from my paleobotany class. They're working with me on a very important research.”

“This research is the one that brought you to Borneo?” Quinn asks. 

Ellie smiles fondly at Quinn as she nods her head. “Partly, yes. Although some part of me also wanted to go to Borneo because I like a vacation,” she almost cackles in a very conspiring tone. “Although that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about to you today is this...” she stops in front of a closed door and opens it.

Inside, the room is filled with shelves upon shelves of rocks. Many of the rocks have imprints on them, each with a noted citation and a small annotation in yellowed paper. Quinn could hear Santana sucking off a breath of air behind her.

“Wow,” Santana mutters in awe. “This is so cool. Come on Britt, let’s go around and check it out. Look there’s a large weird rock. Holy fu--, is that a dinosaur head? Ellie, you have a dinosaur head here!”

Ellie excitedly rocks on the balls of her heels as Santana flits from one side of the shelf to another, drinking in the various artifacts and the preserved plants in stone. Brittany flits by as well, her eyes tracing the patterns in the rocks, her blue eyes full of awe and wonder that could only mirror Santana’s.

Quinn agrees. She had been in this room for so many times she could count, but it still takes her breath away. Ellie waves her over to the far side of the room, where a large rock tinted with raw sienna sits on a table.

“Here’s one of the oldest plants ever seen by man, a type of a gingkophyte,” Ellie says in an almost-whisper. “Lena was able to produce a comprehensive imaging of its characteristics under a fluorescence microscope and via spectroscopy but I can’t show it to you yet, because we’re still analyzing its results.”

Quinn stares at the butterfly-like structures snaking at one side of the rock. It’s almost a dark-blue hue, and her mind wanders off at what things this plant must have seen while it was still alive and living. 

_ What great and terrible things this small plant could have witnessed? _

“It looked up to dinosaurs,” Ellie says. “The very first leaves of  _ Ginkgo adiantoides  _ appeared during the early Sinemurian period of the Lower Jurrassic.”

Quinn blushes. “Did I say it out loud?”

Ellie laughs. "I know you, Bumpkin."

Quinn smiles as she brings her face closer to the rock behind the glass panel, her hazel eyes staring into the ripples in the rock.

On Monday, Quinn doesn't bolt this time around when Rachel approaches their table during lunch. Rachel shyly stands in front of Quinn, waving an awkward hand. Quinn suddenly feels relieved that it's just her and Santana who's currently at their table because their friends have someplace else to be.

"Hi, Quinn."

Quinn manages to squeak out a short and clipped 'hello' before kicking Santana under the table so that the Latina wouldn't have to say something crass again.

Then, it comes, almost like a whisper. "You're welcome," she says.

Quinn knows what exactly is about. The thought of the grade-school card sitting at the bottom of her drawer back at home weighs heavy in her mind.

She slowly turns around, moving slowly as if moving in water. She swallows thickly, and she side-eyes Santana, who's looking shrewdly at her.

"Th-thanks…" she manages to stammer out. She internally kicks herself because she thinks she sounded like a wimp. Santana gives her a shit-eating grin.

Rachel seems really pleased with herself, rocking on the balls of her feet. She smiles at Quinn before turning in her heels and going back to her lunch table.

"She's in love with you," Santana comments as soon as Rachel is out of hearing distance.

“That’s just a load of bullshit,” Quinn says as she stabs her potato, denying Santana all means of eye contact.

"She's in love," Santana drawls out, a throaty laugh bubbling from her pouty lips.

"She's just being a goof, Santana. It's not like anyone who gives you a card makes you automatically in love with you," Quinn forcefully repeats but Santana just cackles like a madwoman.

Just then, Quinn manages to take a look at Rachel, and she catches the serene smile plastered on the brunette's face. Quinn feels her cheeks grow hot.

Suddenly, she's filled with an overwhelming feeling of wanting to see if Rachel sleeps with a serene smile on her face or if she wakes up with the same smile.

Then, Quinn Fabray wonders what it feels like to wake up next to Rachel.

After the last school bell rings, Quinn makes her way to the football field to watch Rachel's cheerleading practice. Her knees are trembling as she jogs the last few steps out of the school hallways, her stomach full of butterflies.

When she reaches the football field, Rachel is not there.

Quinn decides to hang out at the field for a while, wondering why Rachel is not in the field with the other cheerleaders.

Finally, Rachel seems to have no plans of turning up for practice, so Quinn decides to just head home.

Kids are pouring into buses and cars are leaving the parking lot. Students are scattering in all directions, but Rachel is nowhere to be found. 

"...kicked her off the team? What, just now?" two girls walk past as Quinn makes her way to her car.

"...yes, today!" one of them says. "Just now! She's just making her way out of Coach Sylvester's office!"

Quinn couldn't help but overhear.

"Good riddance, then!" the first girl says. "If it was up to me, I would have kicked her out long ago, back when she cheered for other schools!" the first girl said hotly.

She knows exactly what they're talking about -- to be exact, who they're talking about.

_ Rachel has been kicked off the Cheerios. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for the bonus chapter, my friends. I really, really hope you liked it.
> 
> As a final note, please stay safe and I hope you have a happy new year. Peace and Light. xx


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It's that time of the month again. First of all, I would like to thank those who are still supporting this story (yes, I am talking to you about it) and it's just wonderful that you are still staying despite the long intervals between updates. Anyway, I just want to let you know that it makes me so happy knowing you appreciate this story.
> 
> So, I hope you read along and leave comments behind, let me know how it went. Also, can we get the kudos count to 70? It's a bit of a long shot, but hey, we can try...right? Right?
> 
> Anyway, here's the update. I hope you like it.

She hasn't gathered enough courage to talk to Rachel, not until Friday afternoon. By the time she's brave enough to talk to Rachel on Friday, she finds out Rachel's gone home. So, she does the second best thing she could think of -- follow her home.

Quinn watches as the lightbulb at the far corner of Berry's porch flickers on. She feels like she's in one of those birthday mornings she always had since moving to Lima several years ago -- feeling both emotions of excitement and nervousness that refuses to go away.

For a very extraordinary girl, Rachel's house is pretty much average -- at least for Lima standards. It's a one-and-a-half-story bungalow, with a cute front yard filled with colorful flowers and a robust hedge, a shallow L-shaped porch, a white picket fence, a paved driveway, and a yellow mailbox out front.

"That's where Rachel Berry lives," she breathes out to no one in particular. "That's where she lives."

Quinn steps out of her car, not really sure of what she's about to do and only sure that her stomach is flipping in nine ways all at once. It's dark already, as her intention. Quinn gets out of her car, trying to stay under the shadows as much as possible.

She starts to wonder what Rachel could be doing at that particular moment. She starts to wonder if Rachel's hallway is filled with Rachel’s baby pictures. What were they like? She starts to wonder what Rachel's room would look like and she wonders what it would feel like to watch Rachel fall asleep.

Her heart hammers with every step she takes towards the front door. She stands for a full minute in front of Rachel Berry's front door, unable to bring her hand up towards the brass knocker.

Then, Quinn Fabray chickens out.

Hurriedly, she manages to climb down the porch steps without falling flat on her face. She manages to go a good few yards away from the house when the front door opens with a violent swing.

In her panic, Quinn manages to dive into the closest hedge just behind the car parked in Rachel's driveway.

"Who's there?" an older woman with features so much like Rachel's calls at Quinn's general direction.

"Mom, is everything okay?" Rachel's voice flutters through the night air, and Quinn could feel her heart jump to her throat.

_ Rachel. The girl she'd want to wake up next to. The girl she wants to watch eating breakfast. The girl she wants to watch while she’s falling asleep. _

"I thought someone's on the porch," Rachel's mother says, her voice fading into the insides of the house. "Lock the door when you get inside," she tells Rachel, her voice now merely an echo inside the house.

Then, it goes quiet. There's no sound of a door closing.

Quinn doesn't get up from her crouched position. Her thighs and her legs are burning, but she doesn't want to get out of the shadows just yet. She counts one to ten until her heartbeat slows down a notch and she lets out her breath through her pursed lips.

"Do you remember that time when you followed me that one time into the woods after school?"

She almost jumps in surprise when she hears Rachel's voice so close to the hedge. Quinn stops breathing, pushing herself farther into the hedges. She could see Rachel’s footless, drifting shadow beside the car.

She internally debates whether she’d answer Rachel, wondering what would she do should she give her position away.

"Were you scared?" Rachel asks again, her voice so much closer this time.

"No," Quinn gruffly answers, but she still stays crouched under the shadows. If Rachel had found out where she's been hiding, the brunette ex-cheerleader had not made it known.

"So why did you turn back?" Rachel asks again.

"I didn't turn back," Quinn says rather hotly because it's a lie. “I don’t remember being scared and turning back,” she almost sneers when Rachel snorts. A sudden feeling of absurdity courses through her, because...so what if Rachel thinks she’s scared?

“Were you afraid to get lost?” Rachel asks.

“No,” Quinn lies the second time. Her legs are killing her so she finally stands from where she crouched behind the hedge, her head poking through the shrubbery. She’s met with Rachel’s beaming smile. “I wasn’t afraid I’d get lost, Rachel.”

If possible, Rachel’s smile widens more. She rocks on the balls of her heels and she playfully shoves her hands down the front pocket of her dress. “It’s not like I’m going to let you get lost, you know.”

Quinn regards Rachel with a nod, mirroring the other girl and shoving her hands into her pockets. “I know.”

Rachel grins. “Were you hoping we could get to talk to each other tonight?”

“Kinda.”

The brunette ex-cheerleader tilts her head to one side, a curious look upon her face. “Are you lying?”

Quinn just shrugs, her hand still inside her pockets. “Kinda.”

Milo appears on the porch railing, whiskers twitching rapidly. Rachel waves at the ferret before turning back her attention to Quinn. “Does Milo scare you a lot, like the way the other kids at school are scared of him?”

“Kinda.”

The smile Rachel is wearing falls from her face. Her features turn somber. “Do you like me?” she asks, a barely hesitant smile gracing her features like a shy gibbous moon. “If you say kinda once more, I’ll tell Milo to bite you.”

“Yes,” Quinn says.

“Yes, what?”

Quinn sighs and an equally shy smile crawls across her face. “I said I like you,” Quinn says almost shyly. She chances to look at Milo, who’s sitting on the porch baluster with his ears tucked backward, as if listening on into their conversation.

“Don’t worry,” Rachel says playfully. “He’s not gonna tell Mom.”

“Tell your Mom what?” Quinn asks.

“That I’m talking to girls who happen to like me and girls who I happen to like back in front of my house,” Rachel says simply as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. She shrugs a little, and Milo disappears from his post by the baluster.

Quinn’s about to say something --  **_anything_ ** **,** when Rachel’s mother calls her for dinner. A shadow flits by the door, and Rachel's mother pokes her head out of the open door.

“I gotta go,” Rachel tells her, and her smile falters a little.

**_No, don’t go. Don’t go just yet._ **

She doesn't want to leave. She wants to stay there and look at Rachel and exchange shy smiles underneath the warm, yellow light of her porch. She wants to stay there and sit in front of Rachel’s house and watch the stars with her.

She removes her fist from her pockets. "Okay," she says instead. "Good night, Rachel."

"Good night, Quinn." Rachel smiles before skipping back into their house. She lingers for a moment as she reaches the front door. "Do you want to come in for dinner? Mom made horiatiki."

Quinn finds herself refusing, and she could swear she's seen Rachel's smile falter a little before she gingerly runs back to the blonde and places a soft kiss on her cheek, standing on tiptoes as she does before dashing back to the front door and closing it behind her.

Quinn is left watching Rachel leave a trail of stardust behind, staring at the closed door for a few more minutes before staggering back onto the street, her wayward eyes fixed to the route home.

She's halfway down the street before she could even walk straight.

When Monday rolls in, Quinn feels a lot like a floating balloon. When Puck punches her arm lightly to wake her from her stupor, she's brought back from her cloudy dream of chestnut hair and brown eyes.

"Dude, what drug are you on?" Puck asks. "You're high as a kite."

"Don't be an asshole," she weakly punches him back, and she tries to focus on the pizza slice in front of her and not on the brown-haired girl sitting a few tables away.

Santana gives her a look across the table, and it's something that unsettles her for a moment, but then the look passes and Quinn brushes it off her mind.

By the time the school rings the last time, Quinn's already making her way through the third-floor halls, heading to Rachel's classroom. They meet halfway down the hall and Quinn offers to carry her books. Rachel just happily obliges and they walk side by side, innocently brushing their fingertips with each other.

"Do you believe in enchanted places?" Rachel asks her once they're out of McKinley's doors. She doesn't wait for Quinn to answer. "I'm going to show you one."

"What if I don't want to see it?" she mutters.

Rachel grins at her like she just said something so funny. "What if you don't have a choice?"

They keep walking for a while, rounding the road that leads up the hill behind McKinley. Farther and farther from the rows of houses they go, until they reach the faint foot trail that runs deep into the woodland that used to be part of the Shawnee reserve.

As the sun slowly sinks down the horizon, the winter air gets colder, even if there’s no snow just yet. Quinn pulls her coat closer to her body so as to ward off the cold wind. She watches Rachel whose trench coat is opened at the buttons, her coat billowing in the wind like a cape.

“Are you not cold?” Quinn grits her teeth as she rubs her hands together.

Rachel turns to her, pink-cheeked and eyes flushed with mirth. “No,” she says. “Are you?”

The brunette takes to hold her hand. Quinn sighs at the warmth it provided, and they keep holding hands as they walk the trail among tall redwood trees. They walk on, past gullies and creeks, past the woodland and through the fields until they start ascending the hills. They keep holding hands for the entire world to see. 

The terrain becomes familiar to her, and she could see the Interstate to her right. An occasional vehicle passes through the road. The sun is low on the horizon, and the sky is painted with streaks of orange light, and it brings Quinn back to that evening when she followed Rachel out into the road.

“See something familiar?” Rachel asks her in a hushed tone, her breaths puffing out as white air. “When you followed me that day, why did you turn back? I tried to call you and tell you stay, but you did not hear me.”

“You called me?”

Rachel laughs a little. “Why’d you turn back? Were you scared?”

Quinn furrows her brow. She had been scared -- but she’s not telling Rachel that. “No, I wasn’t.”

Rachel throws her head back, her laughter full-on. “Yeah, you totally were.”

“I swear to god, Rachel I was not sca--” 

Quinn sputters halfway when her brain short-circuits because Rachel is holding her hand gently, they’re so close together and their arms are brushing each other’s. It’s too warm for her liking, but she doesn’t let go of Rachel’s hand. Her heart races when Rachel gives her that shy, half-smile she always wears when she thinks no one’s looking.

“It’s okay if you were scared back then,” Rachel says, bumping their shoulders lightly.

They don’t talk after that. Instead, Rachel just holds her hand. It’s not something Quinn is used to, but it’s not something that makes her feel uncomfortable either, so she doesn’t let go of Rachel. They walk the steep grade of trail that leads to a small string of hills that overlooks Lima on one side and the Interstate on the other.

The hilltop is a clearing, with scattered bushes and a few stunted trees. On one side, there’s a small clump of boulders that shoot out of the ground like an ugly scar. The hilltop isn’t much, save for the open sky above it.

In any case, it looks a lot like any other hilltop in Lima, Ohio.

“We’re here,” Rachel says as they approach that ugly-looking boulder.

“Here?” Quinn echoes, and Rachel giggles a little.

“Where else do you expect?” she says. “Do you know that in Iceland, there are designated enchanted places? Like their government assigns enchanted places for people like waterfalls, glaciers and national parks, how cool do you think that is?”

She doesn’t know that fact and how Rachel knew these things escapes her, but she doesn’t want to give in to the embarrassment so she just shrugs her shoulders, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. 

“That’s cool, I guess.”

Rachel puts her bag down on the ground, then she takes off her shoes, socks and all -- and carefully lines them next to her bag. “Come on, Quinn. Let’s sit on the rock. You feel better grounded that way.”

The rock texture tickles her skin, but it’s not something particularly uncomfortable, so she doesn’t mind. Rachel pats the spot next to her, and she quickly mimics Rachel’s lotus position on the smooth rock.

“So this is the enchanted place?” Quinn says, her voice full of pure curiosity. She knows that Rachel is not like the other girls, never like all the other girls she knew. “What makes this so enchanted, Rachel?”

A serene smile creeps across the brunette’s face. “Why do you think people find enchanted places…enchanted?” Rachel asks. “Do you think it’d be different? Extraordinary?”

She shrugs. “Well, sort of.”

A small laugh escapes Rachel’s mouth. “Every place is the same, Quinn. Until the enchantment starts.”

“So when does the enchantment start?”

Rachel sighs, closing her eyes. The last few slivers of the sunlight hit their faces, and Rachel’s hair glows in a fiery-gold hue. “The enchantment’s always been there. It’s hard to see, but the enchantment had started when the world was very, very young. Many people have many names for it,” she whispers, opening her eyes and looking at Quinn.

The sunlight fades across the sky, and the wind grows a little bit colder.

“Isn’t that where your name is from?” Rachel asks.

“What?” Quinn asks dumbly, she’s too mesmerized watching the curve of Rachel’s face, that it barely registers in her.

“Quinn, I mean. For quintessence. The purest form of what there is. That’s why we feel so...small and overwhelmingly insignificant when we look at stars,” she further explains, just as the first few stars march across the sky. “Because they are made of quintessence, and we can see them, even from afar.”

Quinn stares into the darkening sky. She spots three more stars to her left.

“But stars aren’t the only places and things filled with it. People are filled with it, too. Places and people and poems,” Rachel tells her. “It’s always been here, and it never stops. We just have to start learning how to see it,” she trails off quietly, and Quinn is left hanging to her every word, watching the subtle way her throat bobs up and down when the brunette breathes.

“So how do we do this, Rachel?”

“With our eyes closed.”

She snorts, because that is so like Rachel to answer like that.

“No, really. Close your eyes,” Rachel tells her, eyes already closed. 

Quinn follows suit, scratching a little at her nose because it itches. She feels Rachel scoot closer to her, their bent knees touching slightly, and the brunette’s proximity sends a warm flutter blossoming against Quinn’s chest. She suddenly becomes hyper-aware of Rachel’s closeness.

“Have you ever done nothing, Quinn?” Rachel asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Nothing? I do nothing all the time.”

Rachel breathes. “No, not that kind of nothing. Nothing as in nothing. It’s hard to do totally nothing. Even when you are sitting still, your mind is doing something, churning and chattering. There are the secondary thoughts lingering in our heads. So it’s hard to totally do nothing. Thinking of nothing and doing nothing and being nothing at all.”

It’s quiet for a while. Quinn momentarily misses Rachel’s voice, but Rachel’s knees are still touching hers, and for the moment that is enough. She tries to do exactly what Rachel tells her: thinking of nothing and thinking that she is being nothing. Her nose itches one too many times and she keeps hearing the crickets and the wolves howling in the distance.

“Sometimes I imagine myself a vessel full of water. I imagine myself being emptied out,” Rachel whispers. A soft breeze tears through the hilltop. “Then, I imagine myself being erased. Feet and hands, thighs, chest, head. The senses are the hardest to erase, but if I am successful and I become nothing, I become everything.”

Rachel falls silent once again, and Quinn imagines herself being erased. She hears Rachel’s shallow breathing becoming deeper and deeper. After some time, she sighs softly. “When I become nothing, everything can flow into me. The earth flows into me. I become part of the universe and the universe becomes part of me. I am earth, I am sky. I am thunder.”

In the distance, Quinn hears the soft rumble of thunder. She guesses it’s coincidence, but she couldn’t help but entertain the idea that Rachel has finally erased herself and she had become one with a thundercloud.

“I am rock, I am the blade of grass, I am breeze,” Rachel whispers. “I am rain.”

A drop of water softly lands on Quinn’s nose. Then, another drop lands on her brow. Another lands on her forehead. Then, another lands on her knees. She couldn’t help but crack an eyelid open and watch Rachel with astonishment.

Rachel’s eyes are still closed.

“Is that you?” she says, her voice caught between a scream and a whisper, disbelief flooding and seeping into her voice, her heart hammering against her chest.

Rachel only smiles as the tiny droplets of rain fall over them.


	7. ADVISORY

Hello friends!

It had been quite an adventure with you all. Thank you so much for being with this story. It makes my heart warm knowing there are people who wait to have this updated.

Which is why, it really breaks my heart to put this story on hold. Life and career has been getting in the way lately and I couldn't write fast enough to flesh out all the chapters.

Fret not, though. This is just a bump on the road. I will see through the end of this. Allow me to catch up on writing out the remaining chapters. I will be posting updates of this story again in no time. As for my other fic, The Haunting Hill, the updates will still go on. I have already written several chapters ahead, so there no need to put that story on hiatus.

I hope for your understanding.

\-- A.


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